Geraldine A. Ferraro died Saturday morning of complications related to blood cancer, according to a statement released by her family. She was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 1998, and lived with the cancer for 12 years. She was 75 years old when she passed.

Ferraro was the first female vice presidential candidate, and joined Walter Mondale on the 1984 Democratic ticket. She and Mondale lost to the Republican Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush team.

ADVERTISEMENT

She and Sarah Palin are the only two females in history to have been a vice presidential nominee for a major national party.

Before being thrust into the national spotlight of the 1984 campaign, Ferraro was a congresswoman representing part of Queens.

When she accepted the VP nomination at the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco, she said, “My name is Geraldine Ferraro. I stand before you to proclaim tonight: America is the land where dreams can come true for all of us.”

Later in life, Ferraro ran unsuccessfully for the Senate, and appeared on many media outlets as a political commentator. She was a vocal supporter of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 bid for the presidency, and said that she hoped she lived to see the first female president inaugurated.

Her family said she died at Massachusetts General Hospital, and released this statement:

ADVERTISEMENT

“Geraldine Anne Ferraro Zaccaro was widely known as a leader, a fighter for justice, and a tireless advocate for those without a voice. To us, she was a wife, mother, grandmother and aunt, a woman devoted to and deeply loved by her family. Her courage and generosity of spirit throughout her life waging battles big and small, public and personal, will never be forgotten and will be sorely missed.”

Image via WikiMedia Commons.