The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer
PREV
Tammy Faye and her then-husband, television evangelist Jim Bakker,
talk to their TV audience at their PTL ministry near Fort Mill, S.C., in August 1986.
LOU KRASKY / AP
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Tammy Faye Messner, whose can-do Christian cheer helped her survive the PTL scandal and forge a second career as a pop-culture queen, died Friday after battling cancer for more than a decade.
She was 65. News of her death was posted on her Web site Saturday night.
For Tammy Faye, like Elvis, no last name was necessary.
She came to fame in the late 1970s as half of the televangelism team — Jim and Tammy Bakker — that founded the PTL empire in Fort Mill, S.C., which grew to include a hotel, campground and Christian theme park. On the "Jim and Tammy" TV show, she sang about Jesus and shed countless mascara-tinged tears, bringing ever greater support and donations from the faithful — and mounting ridicule from skeptics.
By the late 1980s, the first couple of Christian TV were in disgrace amid a flurry of damaging headlines: that Jim Bakker had a sexual encounter with church secretary Jessica Hahn, that he and associates had paid hush money to keep her quiet and that PTL had defrauded thousands of followers by overselling "lifetime partnerships" at its Heritage Grand hotel.
The PTL (for "Praise the Lord") story eventually faded. But the public's fascination with Tammy Faye — and her determination to re-invent herself — never dimmed.
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