Tom and Christine “Chris” Drake took on life’s challenges together.

“We were just kind of a team; I guess you could call it kind of a tag team,” said Drake Tuesday afternoon. “She was a hardworking woman. She was very well known. You won’t believe how much she did, for me and just on her own, and how well loved she was.”

Wrestling, family, politics and friends — those four themes lie behind nearly every anecdote Tom Drake relates about his 56-year marriage to Christine “Chris” McKoy Drake.

It’s clear from speaking with Drake, the longtime Democrat and former Alabama House Speaker, that his wife was as much a leader in shaping the course of both his private and public life as he was himself. So much so, in fact, that at times it’s hard to tell which Drake had the greater influence in changing the course of both Cullman County and Alabama politics over the past five decades.

Mrs. Drake died Monday from complications related to cancer. As Tom Drake spoke of his long and fruitful life with Chris Tuesday, her hand in enriching the lives of himself, their four children and residents of the Ninth Alabama House District was evident at every turn.

Chris Drake was active in Democratic politics at the state and national levels from a very early time in life — so early, in fact, that she was campaigning for some of the biggest names to ever grace American politics before she was even old enough to vote.

“When she started getting into politics, George Wallace was running at the time, and she was working in Mobile for the state docks as one of the head secretaries,” said Drake. “She was not even able to vote — she was 16 years old — but she campaigned for Wallace. She couldn’t vote for him, but she sure could campaign.

“Later on, when [Walter] Mondale ran for President, the first state that he took was Alabama, and my wife and I were his co-chairmen of his campaign here. We won in Alabama, and we traveled all over Alabama and the Southeast with him and others campaigning for him.”

Chris Drake went on to a very successful career in law, in political campaigning and in being an instrument in the success of the Drakes’ four children, he added.

“My wife worked about 15 years as the head secretary in my office,” he said. “She earned her law degree during that time; she would work, and then go and take courses at the University of Alabama. Then, she came to Athens [State College] and got the rest of her B.S. degree, and then got her law degree at the Birmingham School of Law.

“Now remember, at the same time she was doing all this, she was also cooking, and cleaning, and raising four kids,” he added. “She served on the state board of education under George Wallace. She worked hard no matter what she was doing. She got the money from the state to build the baseball field at Wallace State [Community College]; that’s why it’s named for her. She’d practiced law for about 25 years full time here. She was known as one of the top lady lawyers in North Alabama.”

* Read more in the Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2011, print or e-edition of The Cullman Times.