[2] Lowe met her future husband, George Ryan, while both were students in a freshman English class at Kankakee High School.

[2] Ryan was considered particularly devoted to issues involving the arts, drug and alcohol abuse, organ donation, historic preservation and the recognition of Abraham Lincoln.

[2] As First Lady, Ryan became a major fundraiser and first chairwoman of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, which opened in 2005 in Springfield, Illinois.

[3] Ryan also organized a program in which Illinois schoolchildren collected pennies for the construction of the presidential library, which raised $47,000.

[4] She supported efforts to restore funding to the Illinois Department of Alcohol and Substance Abuse and drug prevention programs.

[2] Ryan supported after school programs and literacy campaigns aimed at discouraging drug use among young people in Illinois.

[1] The anti-drug nonprofit, Prevention First, honored Lura Lynn Ryan's work by naming two research libraries in Springfield and Chicago for her.

[1] Her husband, George Ryan, was temporarily released from prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, on four occasions between January and June 2011 as his wife's health declined in 2011.