Fifty-six years ago this weekend, newspapers across the nation told a sad tale of a family seemingly imploding.
At the center of the story was Coya Knutson, the opera-singing daughter of a Norwegian farmer, and the first woman from Minnesota elected to Congress.
Voted in on her own merits, not appointed to keep a late husband's seat warm for a successor, the trailblazing mother could only watch as vengeful party rivals, a manufactured scandal, and a feckless, alcoholic husband combined to sabotage her career.
It all came to a head on the eve of Mother's Day 1958.