Ex-evangelist Tammy Faye Messner dies at 65

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Tammy Faye Messner, whose can-do Christian cheer helped her survive the PTL scandal and forge a second career as a pop-culture queen, died Friday after battling cancer for more than a decade.

She was 65. News of her death was posted on her Web site Saturday night.

For Tammy Faye, like Elvis, no last name was necessary.

She came to fame in the late 1970s as half of the televangelism team — Jim and Tammy Bakker — that founded the PTL empire in Fort Mill, S.C., which grew to include a hotel, campground and Christian theme park. On the "Jim and Tammy" TV show, she sang about Jesus and shed countless mascara-tinged tears, bringing ever greater support and donations from the faithful — and mounting ridicule from skeptics.

By the late 1980s, the first couple of Christian TV were in disgrace amid a flurry of damaging headlines: that Jim Bakker had a sexual encounter with church secretary Jessica Hahn, that he and associates had paid hush money to keep her quiet and that PTL had defrauded thousands of followers by overselling "lifetime partnerships" at its Heritage Grand hotel.

The PTL (for "Praise the Lord") story eventually faded. But the public's fascination with Tammy Faye — and her determination to re-invent herself — never dimmed.

In her post-PTL life, Mrs. Messner grabbed the occasional spotlight by playing herself on TV, selling Tammy Faye Celebrity Wigs (in 16 different colors), and publishing an autobiography that mostly blamed PTL's downfall on others.

The 4-foot-11 singer, whose first fans were conservative Christians, also developed a cult following among gays, many of whom admired her spunk and her unapologetic — and over-the-top — style.

This year Mrs. Messner moved from her home in Matthews, N.C., to Kansas City, Mo., where the children and grandchildren of her church-contractor husband Roe Messner live, and where he built her a house.

In May, she had this message for her fans posted on www.tammyfaye.com: "The doctors have stopped trying to treat the cancer and so now it's up to God and my faith. And that's enough!"

Mrs. Messner, weighing just 65 pounds, appeared on CNN's Larry King show last week to say that she's relying on her faith in God to get her through the final stages of her life.

She is survived by her husband and her two children with Bakker. Both children followed their parents into the evangelism business: Tammy Sue Chapman is a Christian singer, and Jamie Charles — known as Jay — branded his body with Jesus tattoos, created the Revolution Church and starred in a documentary series on the Sundance Channel called "One Punk Under God."

Through the years, Mrs. Messner called on her sunny Christianity to get through one crisis after another: Bakker's imprisonment and the breakup of their 30-year marriage in 1992; her addiction to tranquilizers; the 1996 conviction and jailing of Roe for federal bankruptcy fraud; Roe's battle with prostate cancer; and her own health problems, which began with colon-cancer surgery in 1996.

Mrs. Messner even learned how to laugh along with those who mocked or imitated her. Stand-up comics made fun of her mascara while drag queens did their best versions of her at gay nightclubs.

"I've had a lot of realities of life hit me right in the face," Mrs. Messner said in 1996. "But I've always believed the words, 'You can make it.' It's not just something I sang at PTL. I never give up."

The former Tamara Faye LaValley was born on March 7, 1942, the oldest of eight children, in International Falls, Minn.

The family was poor, but she had talent: Urged on by her mother, she was singing for church audiences by age 3.

In 1960, she met Jim Bakker. Both were students at North Central Bible College in Minneapolis. He was a smooth-talking young evangelist whose first date with Tammy offered a whisper of the faith and romance to come. They went to church, then he kissed the petite 17-year-old.

"I had never given a boy a kiss on a first date," she once said. "But that wasn't going to stop me now."

Looking back on her life a decade ago, Mrs. Messner summed it all up this way:

"When I was a little girl, I used to pray: 'Dear God, please don't let my life be boring.'

"I found that you have to be careful what you pray for."