She was a Missouri schoolteacher who at age twenty married a coarse miner old enough to be her father. He was a senator and she was becoming one of the most unusual women in the nation’s history. In her time, she gave $21 million to educational and philanthropic causes. She established schools and churches. She raised a son who lived to be eighty but, some say, was always a spoiled, rich, little boy. We remember Phoebe Apperson Hearst for another reason too. She founded the PTA.
