Tammy Faye Bakker Messner (born on March 7, 1942), is a Christian singer, evangelist, author, talk show hostess, and a prominent U.S. television personality, who is the former wife of televangelist, and later convicted felon, Jim Bakker, who co-hosted with him on The PTL Club, from 1976 to 1987.
Jim and Tammy Bakker were married from 1961 until 1992. They met as students at North Central Bible College in Minneapolis. They have two children; daughter Tammy Sue Bakker Chapman (b. March 2, 1970; sons, James and Jonathan)and son Jamie Charles (Jay) Bakker [1] (b. December 18, 1975, wife Amanda).
Early life
The oldest of eight children, Bakker was born Tamara Faye LaValley in International Falls, Minnesota, near Fort Frances, Ontario, Canada, to Pentecostal preachers, Rachel Fairchild and Carl LaValley. Her parents were married in 1941, just one year before Tammy Faye was born. Another child who was born in the LaValley household that would ruin her family's membership in the church. A painful divorce spoiled her mother upon other ministers, therefore, removing her mother from the church. After the divorce, she continued living in a strict atmosphere with her mother and brother. When she was 6 in 1948, her mother remarried to Fred Grover, who worked in the paper mills. Her stepfather's salary had gained more wealth, by including 6 kids. Her stepfather was an unbelievable and strict man.
As a child in the 1950s, she even helped her mother with household chores and even baby sat her younger siblings. Despite all this, she was often spoiled by her favorite aunt, Virginia Fairchild, who is a retired department store manager. She even attended her aunt's church in 1952, when she was accompanied by a friend to the Assemblies of God church, at age 10. On that very same day, she felt the glow of God's love and wanted to call herself upon the Lord. Her entire family even gathered around her for celebrations, particularly Christmas, which is her favorite holiday. In 1956, she started spending summers at Bible camp and was voted Queen. That same year, she attended Falls High School where she hardly did anything, except singing in the choir. Also that same year, she got an afterschool job working at Woolworth's Department Store, the same store that her aunt worked. Those rules didn't serve her well unlike many of her classmates, inside the church. Tammy Faye wasn't allowed to attend any school dances, baseball games, or even at the movies, as her church wouldn't allow them. She in turn was the object of scorn. Before she graduated in 1960, her mother suggested that Tammy Faye would become a minister.
After being expelled from Bible college along with Jim, who is a former high school disc jockey, she relocated with Jim to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she worked in a boutique shop and Jim was working in a restaurant inside a department store. The following year in 1962, they moved to North Carolina, where they began their own ministry.
PTL Club and Scandal
She is best known for her tendency to wear a great deal of makeup, particularly mascara, in public; for The PTL Club (a.k.a. The Jim and Tammy Show); and for the infidelity (see Jessica Hahn) and financial scandals of her former husband.
During the TV shows, she provided an often sentimental touch to stories and loved to sing. In a move that sharply distinguished her from many conservative evangelicals, she showed a more tolerant attitude when it came to homosexuals and she even featured people living with AIDS and strongly urged her listeners to follow Christ and show sympathy to the sick (Benton and Barbato, 2000).
She is also known for Heritage USA; the resort/theme park and cable network broadcast facility built near Charlotte, North Carolina and nearby Fort Mill, South Carolina.
Jim and Tammy Bakker had been involved with television from their departure from Minneapolis, Minnesota (where they met and later married through a Pentecostal Bible College), until they moved to the Charlotte area, via Virginia Beach, Virginia, where they founded the 700 Club and a puppet ministry for children on Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcast Network (CBN) from 1964 to 1973, and in California where they co-founded the Trinity Broadcasting Network with personal friends Paul and Jan Crouch.
The PTL empire grew under the Bakkers' leadership, but the concern about their opulent lifestyle grew as media reports of an air-conditioned dog house at their lakefront parsonage as well as gold-plated bathroom fixtures dominated newscasts in the 1980s.
The Bakkers' home, owned by the ministry, was actually an older home built in the early 1970s and it was a few miles away from the mansion. Jim Bakker stated that the much-talked-about dog house was heated with an old heater to keep the dogs warm in the winter and the reported gold-plated fixtures were actually brass.
However, due to Jim Bakker's resignation from the ministry after an affair with Jessica Hahn became public, as well as investigative reporters from the Charlotte Observer reporting on PTL's finances and management, PTL went bankrupt after being taken over by controversial Lynchburg, Virginia-based Baptist televangelist Jerry Falwell, who offered to step in following the scandals in 1988.
It was widely reported that Falwell's interest in PTL and Heritage USA was solely an attempt to gain control of its profitable cable television network — something which Falwell was unsuccessful in establishing for his own ministry despite numerous requests to the FCC for permission to obtain a satellite license.
After PTL
She married former Heritage USA contractor and church builder Roe Messner in 1993. She now goes by the name Tammy Faye Messner, and resides in the Charlotte, NC suburb of Matthews, North Carolina. Her husband was diagnosed with prostate cancer years ago, but has chosen not to seek traditional chemotherapy and radiation treatments in favor of a "watchful waiting" approach (one source indicated that he did not have health insurance).
Tammy Faye Messner was the subject of a documentary film entitled The Eyes of Tammy Faye (1999) and a follow up film entitled Tammy Faye: Death Defying (2004) from Lions Gate Films.
In 1996, she co-hosted another TV talk show entitled The Jim J. and Tammy Faye Show, with Jim J. Bullock, an HIV-positive and openly gay actor. The syndicated show ended when Tammy chose to leave after being diagnosed with colon cancer.
She also appeared on The Drew Carey Show, playing the mother of Mimi Bobek; also known for wearing excessive amounts of mascara.
Cancer
On March 19, 2004, just 12 days after her 62nd birthday, Tammy Faye Messner, a survivor of colon cancer, announced on Larry King Live (broadcast on CNN) that she had inoperable lung cancer and would soon begin chemotherapy. Later, on November 30, 2004, also on Larry King Live, she announced that she was cancer free. She described details of her chemotherapy and continued to appear regularly on that show. It was on the program that she announced, on July 20, 2005, that cancer had returned to her lungs. In 2005, she appeared in an infomercial for controversial medicinal advice author Kevin Trudeau. On March 13, 2006, just 6 days after her 64th birthday, she appeared again on a Larry King Live broadcast on CNN and stated that she is suffering from Stage 4 Lung Cancer and is continuing treatment for it. She also mentioned difficulty swallowing food, having panic attacks and having lost quite a bit of weight. As of March 2006, she weighs roughly 94 lbs. A "Talk of the Town" item in the October 2, 2006 issue of The New Yorker stated that she was dying in hospice care.
The Surreal Life
In early 2004, she appeared on the second season of the Warner Bros. reality series, The Surreal Life. The show chronicled a twelve-day period when she, porn star Ron Jeremy, rapper Vanilla Ice, Baywatch actress Traci Bingham, CHiPs actor Erik Estrada, and Trishelle Cannatella from The Real World: Las Vegas all lived together in a Los Angeles house and were assigned various bizarre tasks and activities.
Together, the six put on a children's play, visited a nudist resort (without her), managed a restaurant for a day, and got readings from a psychic (also without her).
During the taping, she forged close bonds with all of the other six house mates, many of whom came to look up to her as a mother-figure and a spiritual inspiration.
During the show's taping, she attended a book signing for her recent best-seller, I Will Survive... And You Will Too. Her book signing brought people of all ages, from all walks of life; including punks, gays, transvestites and religious followers.
At the signing, she spoke candidly about her relationship with Bakker and how she had to learn to let go.
She made an impassioned plea for all people to grant themselves permission to cast off the things that are holding them back, to forgive themselves and others, to be happy with themselves whoever they are, to persevere in the face of opposition, and to show each other unconditional love. Her speech moved her four roommates that were present (Jeremy stayed home) to tears; Bingham later confessed that it had been a life-altering moment for her.
At the end of the show, Messner said she thought of Vanilla Ice and Trishelle Cannatella as children and could relate to them deeply because she had had similar feelings and problems when she had been their age. She stated that Jeremy was one of the nicest and most gentlemanly people she had ever met in her life.
Involvement with the IRS
The Charlotte Observer reported that the Internal Revenue Service still holds Bakker and Roe Messner, her husband since 1993, liable for personal income taxes owed from the 1980s when they were building the Praise The Lord empire, taxes assessed after the IRS revoked the PTL ministry's nonprofit status.
Messner said Jim Bakker and his former wife didn't want to talk about the tax issues: "We don't want to stir the pot." He also said that the original tax amount was about $500,000, with penalties and interest accounting for the rest. The notices reinstating the liens list "James O. and Tamara F. Bakker" as owing $3 million, on which liens the Bakkers still pay.
Tammy Faye in popular culture
Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker are referred to in Frank Zappa's song, Jesus Thinks You're a Jerk, from the Broadway the Hard Way tour of 1988, and released post-PTL scandal in 1989. Zappa's song lampoons and castigates evangelical television ministries of that era, and the PTL Club was a prime target.
Canadian writer Margaret Atwood loosely based her character 'Serena Joy' in the novel The Handmaid's Tale on Tammy Faye Bakker.[citation needed]
In 2005 she was honored by Lancaster, South Carolina with 'Tammy Faye Day' on April 21, 2005.
Tammy Faye Bakker has developed a devoted fan base in the gay and transvestite communities, possibly in homage to her exaggerated make-up and fashion sense. A drag entertainer dubbed Tammy Faye Sinclair performs in the West Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky areas.
In 1985, she was mentioned by the hardcore punk band NOFX during their "Jim and Tammy Bakker Fundraising" Tour on the tour T-shirts that stated "If we don't sell all our singles, God will kill us!." Her image was also used on the NOFX album, The P.M.R.C. Can Suck on This!.
In 2006, a musical entitled The Gospel According to Tammy Faye opened at the Cincinnati Fringe Festival, and is currently being developed for a larger professional production. The show features songs by JT Buck and a book by Fernando Dovalina. The musical is described as a fantasia which takes a balanced and fair look at its subject. The impetus for the show was provided by a lengthy interview Messner gave the authors in March 2005.
Another musical following the life of Ms. Bakker, entitled "Big Tent", is currently being developed for a debut in the summer of 2007 in New York City. The show features music and lyrics by Ben Cohn and McDaniel, a book by Jeffery Self, and direction by Ryan J. Davis.
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