Sheila Ison Wellstone was born in 1944 in the coal-mining regions of Kentucky, the daughter of Southern Baptists. When she was in high school, her family relocated to Washington, DC, where at age sixteen, Sheila met her future husband. Despite their different backgrounds - Paul was the Jewish son of Russian immigrants - they began dating during their final year of high school.
Paul and Sheila went on to attend different universities - Paul to the University of North Carolina and Sheila to the University of Kentucky. But by the middle of their first year of college, Sheila decided to move to North Carolina to be with Paul. In the summer of 1963, they were married. Both had just turned nineteen. The following year, the first of their three children was born.
After Paul completed his PhD, the Wellstones settled in Northfield, Minnesota when Paul accepted a teaching position at Carleton College. For twenty years, Sheila dedicated herself to raising their children and working as an aide in the Northfield High School library.
When Paul won election to the Senate in 1990, Sheila focused her attention on politics and public policy. At the beginning of Paul's first term, she took notice of an alarming state and national crisis. Each year, approximately 1.5 million women were victims of domestic violence. As someone who spent much of her life dedicated to providing a safe and loving home for her family, Sheila was outraged, and determined to educate herself on this issue.
For a year, she read and listened to people's stories. At shelters in Minnesota and in Washington, she listened to victims of domestic violence recount in horrifying detail the abuse they had suffered. Women sat in circles in shelter living rooms across the state and told her stories so private that they had sometimes never told them before. She listened and she learned.
And then this former librarian who never imagined herself a public person went to work. Over the course of ten years, Sheila Wellstone established herself as one of the nation's leading experts on the problem of domestic violence. Working with her husband, she played a key role in the drafting and passage of the Violence Against Women Act. She had an instrumental role in crafting and passing other pieces of legislation aimed at protecting women and children from the ravages of domestic violence. She was actively involved in raising awareness of international human rights abuses, including the issue of sex trafficking of young women and girls.
Wellstone's Senate colleagues praised Sheila for her unique and influential work in raising their awareness of domestic violence issues. In addition to serving on many national and Minnesota advisory committees in this issue area, Sheila was also appointed by the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to the Violence Against Women Advisory Council in 1995. Sheila gained national renown and helped put domestic violence on the policy agenda of our country.
In addition to her domestic violence work, Sheila played a critical role in all of Paul's campaigns. She was a shrewd observer of politics who gave her husband honest and smart advice and strategic ideas. She was also an invaluable asset on the campaign trail. Despite her dislike of public speaking, she became a polished and persuasive public speaker who inspired audiences with her passion and understanding of the issues. By the end of Paul's second term, political observers in Minnesota began speculating that Sheila would be a formidable political candidate herself.
But as passionate as Sheila was for her work, her family always came first. She was a loving mother, and her 39-year marriage to Paul was uncommonly strong - they were known for holding hands on neighborhood walks and sitting next to each other when they dined alone. They relied on each other in times of stress, and she accompanied him to nearly all of his campaign stops. Sheila and their daughter Marcia were on board Paul's chartered plane when it crashed in northern Minnesota just twelve days before election day, 2002. There were no survivors.