Margaret Heckler, an eight-term Republican congresswoman from Massachusetts, President Ronald Reagan’s secretary of Health and Human Services and U.S. ambassador to Ireland, died Monday. She was 87.
Heckler died of cardiac arrest at an Arlington, Va., hospital, her family said.
She was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1966 and at the time was one of only 11 women in the House, where she pushed for legislation to prohibit discrimination based on gender or marital status for women applying for credit. She served until 1983.
At Health and Human Services from 1983 until 1985, Heckler was among the first high-profile members of the Reagan administration to call for additional federal funding for AIDS research.
She also ordered a landmark report on the health of blacks and Hispanics, which ultimately showed that blacks had a disproportionate number of deaths from certain diseases and which highlighted how little was known about the health of Latinos because death certificates at the time did not have an Hispanic identifier, said Jane Delgado, who worked for Heckler at HHS and is now president and CEO of the National Alliance for Hispanic Health.
As a result of that report, Delgado said, the national model for death certificates was changed in 1989, allowing health officials to track the causes of Hispanics’ deaths.
“She was an incredible role model and supporter of women,” Delgado added. “At the time, women were always told to not show their feelings. But she was passionate and had strong opinions.”
After Heckler left the Cabinet, she served until 1989 as ambassador to Ireland, where she worked to bring peace to Northern Ireland during a 30-year conflict known as “The Troubles.”
Former Boston Mayor Raymond L. Flynn remembered Heckler getting a standing ovation at the Lansdowne Road Stadium in Dublin, where the Boston College football team was taking on West Point.
“It’s something I’ll never forget,” Flynn said. “The whole place just erupted. It was quite a tribute to her.”
Herald wire services contributed to this report.
