He was twenty-five when he married the daughter of a famous doctor. She died only six months later. But she had a sister, so he married her. She bore him two sons and died about six years later. But she had a sister, so he asked the old doctor if he could marry the third daughter. The doctor supposedly said, “Take her, Calib. But don’t come back for the old lady. She’s all I got left.” Pulitzer Prize winning author MacKinlay Kantor wrote that Clairborne Fox Jackson must have been terribly hard on wives. But marrying three sisters wasn’t his only achievement. Calib Jackson would die in a fight for a lost cause after reaching the state’s highest office.

AUDIO: AOWM April 4, 2005 (mp3)