The name Tammy Faye calls to mind a weepy face caked with mascara and eye makeup and a voice oozing Christian charity while all the while talking the elderly and simple-minded out of their cash.
No doubt Tammy Faye, born Tamara Faye LaValley to husband-and-wife Pentecostal preachers in Minnesota, had her good qualities, but without doubt those qualities were shoved conveniently aside back during the profitable heyday of the money-making TV evangelists.
While attending Bible college, she met fellow student Jim Bakker. They married and began a ministry of their own.
The happy couple learned the ropes in Tidewater Virginia with the Rev. Pat Robertson, helping him found the 700 Club and the Trinity Broadcasting Network. When Smiling Pat horned in too much on their territory, the Bakkers relocated to Charlotte, N.C., and went into business for themselves with what they named the PTL Club.
They intended PTL to stand for "Praise the Lord,: but cynics suggested it must actually stand for "Pass the Loot" due to the couple's constant appeals for "love gifts" from the faithful out there in television land.
The Bakkers then used some of the loot to establish a huge amusement park, Heritage USA, near Charlotte.
Alert reporters at the Charlotte Observer began to investigate some of their sordid activities and to probe their lavish lifestyle.
In 1980, Jim broke bad with a buxom young woman named Jessica Hahn, and before you could swing a dead cat, their empire came crashing down around them. Husband Jim was sentenced to 45 years, although he somehow was released after only six.
Tammy Faye divorced him and in 1993 married one of Bakker's former partners in Heritage USA, Rod Messner, who later was convicted of bankruptcy fraud.
In 2007, Tammy Faye died after an 11-year battle against cancer. In the years prior to her death, she became an icon to gays and cross-dressers. She had also had her own line of beauty products and had done some TV work, most notably on the reality show The Surreal Life.
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