The women behind the men who are under the gun:
Helen Stevenson-Meyner, 30 dark-haired daughter of Ohio's Oberlin College president, met New Jersey's bachelor governor when he was visiting her parents two years ago, married him in January 1957. She is slowly losing her early shyness, dutifully turns up at official fetes, fairs and fund-raising projects, plays tireless hostess for frequent luncheons, dinners and sightseeing tours at the gubernatorial mansion. She campaigned with her husband at election time but gave few speeches, has made a pincushion out of the back seat of the Meyners' state-owned Cadillac. "These women come up to me with these flowers and they all seem to stick me in the chest when they pin them on me. I keep the pins as souvenirs." Says she: "We're not bitten by the presidential bug."
Bernice Layne Brown, 49, married California's Governor-elect Pat Brown in 1930, has four children, two grandchildren. Never intensely interested in politics, she hugged the background until Pat announced for the gubernatorial race. She did not approve of his running, much less the prospect of leaving their Forest Hill home in San Francisco for the Governor's mansion in Sacramento, but she jumped into the campaign with surprising verve, even left her sickbed (phlebitis) against doctors' orders to make the election-night rounds with him. Gifted with lively wit, Bernice Brown showed a great talent for joshing her husband out of taking himself too seriously and soothing hurt egos among quarreling members of the inner political family.
Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, 28, comes from a socialite Republican family (the late Manhattan Financier John V. Bouvier III), got a socialite's education, was inquiring photographer for the Washington Post and Times-Herald when she met Jack Kennedy "over the asparagus" at a dinner party in 1951. They were married at a big Newport blowout (700 guests) in September 1953, have an infant daughter. Although she traveled with her husband during the last campaign ("Some days we would shake 2,500 to 3,000 hands"), Jackie tried to avoid making speeches, prefers a homebody's life.
Muriel Fay Buck Humphrey, 46, as typically calm and warm as Senator Hubert Humphrey is bouncy and brash. Married in 1936 ("It was love at first waltz"), Muriel has always been politically obliging (she turned up on TV's Masquerade Party dressed as Minnehaha). In 1954 she started the Minnesota Women for Humphrey (neighborhood coffee parties, etc.). She has been mistaken at times for Mamie Eisenhower (who once told her: "How nice and well-behaved your bangs are"), puts politics second to keeping her family (four children, aged ten to 20) together, says: "You can't be a social butterfly and a good mother."