Tammy Faye Bakker Messner, the mascaraed matriarch of Christian television who with her then-husband Jim built and ultimately lost the country's largest evangelical empire, died Friday after her third fight with cancer. She was 65.

Messner, who had battled colon cancer since 1996 that more recently spread to her lungs, died at her home, said her booking agent, Joe Spotts. A family service was held Saturday in a private cemetery, where her ashes were interred, he said.

Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker rose to prominence in the 1970s and '80s on their Christian talk show, "The PTL Club." He was the baby-faced preacher constantly pleading for cash. She was his singing sidekick, a chirpy Midwestern gal with Sally Bowles lashes and shoulder pads as big as her hair. A giggler and a cryer, she was an easy target for late-night comedians.

But she and her husband attracted hundreds of thousands of loyal viewers, donated millions of dollars to charity and constructed a massive religious retreat complete with hotel and water park.

Then, in 1987, their ministry collapsed amid sexual and financial scandals that eventually landed Jim in prison. Few thought they'd see his wife again.

But television couldn't resist Tammy Faye.

After a period toiling as pastor of an Orlando church she founded, she returned to the airwaves, first as co-host of a secular talk show, later as a cast member of a reality show and in a cable documentary about her cancer fight.

Her combination of disarming frankness, undying cheerfulness and self-deprecating humor won her a new host of fans. Though she never completely lost her status as a punchline (TV Guide in January 2006 recommended a mascara that would give you long lashes without making you look "all Tammy Faye"), she transcended her image — in part because of her willingness to embrace people of all types.

Early days
Tamara Faye LaValley grew up in International Falls, Minn., the oldest of eight children in a poor family. Their Pentecostal denomination strictly forbade the wearing of makeup, but as she wrote in her autobiography, "Tammy: Telling It My Way," once she tried lipstick at a friend's house, she was hooked.

False eyelashes and flashy clothes eventually became her signature.

"If you don't like how I look, look the other way," she wrote. "I plan on looking this way till I'm a hundred. I will be buried in my makeup and eyelashes."

At Bible college in Minneapolis, she met and married Jim Bakker. The newlyweds conducted revivals throughout the South before they got their start in television in 1965, creating and starring in a children's puppet show on evangelist Pat Robertson's fledgling Christian Broadcasting Network.

After their relationship with Robertson ended in acrimony seven years later — and a subsequent teaming with Paul and Jan Crouch of Trinity Broadcasting Network also ended badly — they set out on their own.

They launched the syndicated "PTL Club" in 1974 from their new home in Charlotte, N.C. Its success spawned the sprawling Heritage USA complex.

At its zenith in the mid-'80s, the Bakkers' vacation spot spanned 2,300 acres and included a $10 million water park, 500-room hotel, campground, condos, shopping center and petting zoo. The park also found room for the transported boyhood home of evangelist Billy Graham, an amphitheatre featuring a nightly Passion Play, and the "Upper Room," a two-story replica of a Jerusalem building thought to resemble the place where the Last Supper was held.

But even during the boom years, trouble lurked.

Rough times
Jim and Tammy Faye grew increasingly estranged and even separated for a time. Tammy developed an addiction to painkillers that landed her in the Betty Ford Clinic.

All of this they revealed to their television audience. But neither the audience nor Tammy Faye knew that PTL had been paying hush money to Jessica Hahn, a former church secretary whom Jim had sex with in 1980.

Meanwhile, the never-ending expansion of Heritage USA, combined with the Bakkers' extravagant lifestyle, created tremendous financial strain on the organization. When the Hahn scandal broke in 1987, the Bakkers turned over management of PTL to fellow televangelist Jerry Falwell, who they later claimed stole PTL from them.

News accounts detailed the Bakker's lavish lives — their houseboat, their three homes ... and their infamous air-conditioned doghouse.

In her autobiography, Tammy Faye said she wished they hadn't paid themselves quite as well as they did. Still, she claimed, the evangelists and their two children, Tammy Sue and Jamie, needed most of what they had to give them a respite from constant public attention. As for her pooches' residence: "That doghouse was never air-conditioned, only heated."

PTL filed for bankruptcy, and in 1989, Jim Bakker was found guilty on fraud and conspiracy charges. He spent five years in prison.

The Bakkers' already-strained marriage collapsed while he was behind bars.

In her book, Tammy Faye recalls her visits with him: "He would come out of the prison holding cell into the visitors' area, and all I wanted to do was to cry. When I kissed him I felt nothing, just profound sadness. We would sit down and not even look at each other."

Their split brought relief: "I realized that I didn't have to carry Jim's heavy burdens anymore. ... I didn't have to make everything all right for him anymore."

Back on the air
In 1993, she married the just-divorced Roe Messner, the contractor who built much of Heritage USA and who later spent time in prison for bankruptcy fraud.

Three years later she was back on the air with "The Jim J. and Tammy Faye Show," on the irreverent Fox Network. Her co-host, the openly gay Jim J. Bullock, told the AJC in March 2006 that before he met Tammy Faye, he thought of her as a joke. He'd once visited Heritage USA and bought Tammy Faye hand lotion and a pair of Tammy Faye pantyhose that he still owns.

Then Fox set up a meeting between the two.

"She walked in, and I remember seeing her and thinking, 'She's so much prettier in person.' "

To his surprise, he also found her completely genuine. And despite her fundamentalist beliefs, she never had a problem with his sexual orientation.

"To me she really is the idea of what a true Christian should be — really Christlike," he said. "She's not a judgmental person and she's not there to force her faith or her belief on anybody else. She's just here to love."

In her book she remembered one of her earliest conversations with Bullock.

"Jim J., when I look at people, I do not see gay or straight; all I see is the person. And I see a person that God loves," she said she told him. "Who am I to judge? ... I know how it hurts to be judged."

The show ended after a short run, when Tammy Faye was diagnosed with colon cancer.

She beat that and found herself once more in front of the cameras, this time for the 2000 feature documentary "The Eyes of Tammy Faye," narrated by RuPaul. In 2004 she returned to TV for "The Surreal Life," the VH1 reality show that assembles faded stars under one roof. Her castmates included actor Erik Estrada, rapper Vanilla Ice and former porn star Ron Jeremy.

She came across as wacky and likeable, and found a way to befriend Jeremy while still advocating for her God.

"Tammy Faye: Death Defying," a documentary chronicling her second bout with cancer, aired on WE in July 2005, the same month she announced the cancer had returned for a third time. In it, she talked about the possibility of dying.

"I want my funeral to be a really happy time. ... I want everybody laughing and remembering how crazy I was," she said. "Now, I want to be cremated. I'd like to have them put me in a maraca and put [my] name on it. And then when they're up at church and they're playing the maraca and they're having a good time, singing, that will be [me] in there with [my] bones shaking."

Loyal to fans
Through it all, she kept in touch with her fans through her Web site, posting letters that showcased her trademark honesty and humor.

Here, in August 2005, she talks about recovering from her latest round of chemotherapy:

"I took my first BATH today in a week. I was starting to smell worse than the dogs! Ha! ha! I covered myself in 'self tanning lotion,' dark fat looks better than white fat is my motto.......ha! and I now smell like my favorite fragrance, Estee Lauder, Private Collection. I've worn it for years! Now I feel like I'm mostly back to ME! Thank You God!"

In her missives she would admit to feeling down, but she always closed on a note of hope. For as she wrote in her autobiography years earlier: "It's not the circumstances that destroy you; it is your attitude toward the circumstances that destroys you."

It was a motto that served her well.

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/stories/2007/07/21/tammyfaye_0721.html