Sugar and Steel

"She is the best woman politician I've seen," said a Texas Republican last week of Anne Legendre Armstrong. "She's sugar and steel." Gerald Ford, who will announce her appointment as U.S. Ambassador to Britain this week, plainly agrees. Those who knew her as co-chairman of the Republican National Committee in 1972 or as a Cabinet-rank White House counselor during the Nixon Administration were equally extravagant in their notices. At once tough, gracious and articulate, Mrs. Armstrong is one of Ford's more distinguished appointments. The only shadow of criticism is that she doggedly defended Richard Nixon until almost the last bloody moment of Watergate.

In going to London to replace incoming Commerce Secretary Elliot Richardson, Mrs. Armstrong, 48, will become the 14th woman to be named a U.S. ambassador since World War II (six are currently on duty). She is also the first woman to win a major ambassadorial post since Clare Boothe Luce served in Rome in the Eisenhower years.

The daughter of wealthy New Orleans Coffee Importer Armant Legendre, who belonged to a Creole family, Anne Armstrong earned a Phi Beta Kappa key at Vassar and worked briefly for the New Orleans Times-Picayune. In 1950 she married wealthy Texas Rancher Tobin Armstrong (who will probably accompany her to London) and became mistress of a 50,000-acre Southern Texas spread. Besides being mother of five children, Mrs. Armstrong helps keep the ranch books, works with the Santa Gertrudis cattle on occasion--"She can cut a herd with the best of them," says her husband. She is also an active sportswoman (tennis, swimming and hunting).

Licking Stamps. She started in Republican politics in the early '50s, raising funds and licking stamps in a Texas precinct. Within a few years she was a National Committeewoman, and by 1972 she had become the first woman co-chairman of the party and the first woman to deliver the keynote address at a major national political convention. But she has repeatedly refused to run for office herself.

As counselor to Nixon, Anne Armstrong had a, wide range of responsibilities--sitting on the Council on Wage and Price Stability and the domestic council, among other jobs. Her name was briefly mentioned as a possible Vice President after Spiro Agnew resigned.

Says Women's Activist Jill Ruckelshaus. who worked for her during the Watergate days: "She was for women's rights when it meant not very much to anybody. She's primarily responsible for getting women into the military academies. She convinced the White House that women are the future."

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