In loving memory of Tammy Faye
March 7, 1942 - July 20, 2007

The oldest of eight children, Tammy Faye was born Tamara Faye LaValley in International Falls, Minnesota, near Fort Frances, Ontario, Canada, to Pentecostal preachers, Rachel Fairchild and Carl LaValley.

As a child in the 1950s, she helped her mother with household chores and baby sat her younger siblings. Despite all this, she was often spoiled by her favorite aunt, Virginia Fairchild, who was a retired department store manager. She attended her aunt's church in 1952. When she was accompanied by a friend to the Assemblies of God church, at age 10, she said 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 sang in the choir. Also that same year, she got an afterschool job working at Woolworth's Department Store, the same store where her aunt worked. Tammy Faye wasn't allowed to attend any school dances, baseball games, or even the movies, as her church wouldn't allow it. In turn, she was an object of scorn by her peers. Before she graduated in 1960, her mother suggested that Tammy Faye would become a minister.

Tammy Faye met Jim Bakker through a Pentecostal Bible College, and they later married. After Bible college she relocated with Jim to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she worked in a boutique shop and Jim worked in a restaurant inside a department store. The following year in 1962, they moved to North Carolina, where they began their own ministry.

Tammy Faye is best known for The PTL Club (a.k.a. The Jim and Tammy Show). During the TV shows, she provided an often sentimental touch to stories and loved to sing. In a move that sharply distinguished her from other televangelists, she showed a more tolerant attitude when it came to homosexuals and she featured people living with AIDS on PTL, urging her viewers to follow Christ and show sympathy to the sick.

She is also known for Heritage USA; the Christian resort/theme park and cable network broadcast facility built near Charlotte, North Carolina in nearby Fort Mill, South Carolina.

Jim and Tammy Bakker had been involved with television from their departure from Minneapolis, Minnesota, 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 Bakkers' home, owned by the ministry, was an older home, a few miles away from PTL, that was built in the early 1970s.

After PTL, Tammy Faye married former Heritage USA contractor and church builder Roe Messner in 1993.

Tammy Faye with her Mom

Tammy Faye with her daughter Tammy Sue, son Jamie Charles "Jay" and Jim Bakker