Pamela Harriman - Political Life

Political Life

As Pamela Churchill Harriman she became a United States citizen in 1971 and became involved with the Democratic Party, creating a fund-raising system — a political action committee — named "Democrats for the 80s", later "Democrats for the 90s", and nicknamed "PamPAC". In 1980, the National Women's Democratic Club named her "Woman of the Year". U.S. President Bill Clinton appointed her United States Ambassador to France in 1993. The Dayton Agreement was signed in Paris in 1995 while she served as ambassador.

Pamela Harriman died on 5 February 1997 at the American Hospital, Neuilly-sur-Seine, after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage while swimming at the Paris Ritz one day earlier. The morning after her death, President Jacques Chirac of France placed the Grand Cross of the Légion d'honneur on her flag-draped coffin. She was the first female foreign diplomat to receive this honour. President Clinton, in further recognition of her contributions and significance, dispatched Air Force One to return her body to the United States and spoke movingly at her funeral at the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.

She was buried 14 February 1997 at Arden, the Harriman estate near New York.

Her life story has been the subject of a documentary film, and has been somewhat Hollywoodised in the 1998 TV movie The Life of the Party: The Pamela Harriman Story with Ann-Margret in the title role. In the biography of Madeleine Albright, Pamela Harriman is cited in contrast to Albright, as a socialite who slept her way to the top. In addition, the novel Absolute Power tells the tale of a fictional woman named Christy Sullivan, married to a much older W. Sullivan (a striking similarity to the name W. Averell Harriman perhaps), whose extramarital liaison with the President ends in her murder. In a new two-character play Swimming at The Ritz by Charles Leipart, Pamela Harriman, in need of $40 million to settle a family lawsuit, regales the audience with tales from her past. She and a hotel valet wait in a Paris Ritz suite for appraisers from Christie's who are preparing to auction her possessions.