WASHINGTON — The nation’s most powerful Democrats for the past quarter-century, friends and family of Madeleine Albright celebrated the life Wednesday of the nation’s first woman secretary of state, who arrived in the U.S. as a young girl from war-torn Czechoslovakia before becoming a trailblazing diplomat and icon.
“In the 20th and 21st century, freedom had no greater champion than Madeleine Korbel Albright,” said President Joe Biden, eulogizing Albright at her funeral at Washington National Cathedral. He called Albright a “force a nature” who through “goodness, race and humanity turned the tide of history.”
Albright died March 23 at 84 years old after a fight with cancer, leaving a legacy as a defender of democracy, human rights and peace whose whose journey from war-torn Europe embodied the American story.
