The Knoxville News-Sentinel - Monday, July 3, 2000


Floreine "Flo" Rankin Alexander, mother of former Tennessee governor Lamar Alexander, died Saturday.

She was 85.

Mrs. Alexander died of heart failure in Dallas. She had been living in the Presbyterian Village there since moving from Maryville in 1996.

She was the widow of Andrew Alexander.

While living in Maryville, she operated Mrs. Alexander's Nursery School and Kindergarten in the backyard garage of her home for 30 years.

Lamar Alexander, a former Republican presidential candidate, said his mother's work with children was widely known.

"It seemed that wherever I went on my presidential campaign -- especially in the South -- that I would run into someone who had gone to my mother's nursery school and kindergarten," said Alexander, who mounted presidential bids in 1996 and 2000.

Mrs. Alexander was born in Barry County, Mo., on Aug. 14, 1914. Her father, however, was a fifth-generation native of Dumplin Valley in East Tennessee's Jefferson County.

Mrs. Alexander came to Blount County in 1931 to attend Maryville College.

There she met and later married Andrew Alexander, also a Maryville College student, in 1939.

"She and my father gave to me and to my sisters a privileged upbringing," Lamar Alexander said.

"We didn't have much money, but because of them, we did have everything we needed that was truly important."

Mrs. Alexander is survived by three children, Lamar Alexander of Nashville, Ann Schuler of Tulsa, Okla., and Jane Carl of Dallas; a sister, Mary Jane Rose of Linville, N.C.; and eight grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held Monday, July 10, at 7 p.m. at the New Providence Presbyterian Church, 703 W. Broadway Ave., in Maryville.

The family requests that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the Flo Alexander Children's Library at the church or to Maryville College.