John Chafee

John Chafee

John Lester Hubbard Chafee (born October 22, 1922 in Providence , Rhode Island , †  October 24, 1999 in Bethesda , Maryland ) was an American politician . He belonged to the Republican Party .

Life

Chafee's family was politically active. His great grandfather Henry Lippitt was Governor of Rhode Island. Chafee graduated from Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts in 1940 . Subsequently, from 1942 to 1945, he fought for the United States Marine Corps in World War II . Until 1947 he studied law at Yale University , then until 1950 at Harvard University . In the same year he was admitted to the bar in Rhode Island and practiced there.

From 1951 to 1953 he fought as a Marine in the Korean War .

politics

Shortly after his return, Chafee went into politics. In 1956 he was elected to the Rhode Island House of Representatives. He was re-elected in 1958 and 1960, and in 1963 he was elected governor. In 1969 he was beaten by the Democrat Frank Licht .

In the same year he was selected by US President Richard Nixon as Navy Secretary ( Secretary of the Navy nominated) and confirmed. He held this post until 1972, when he resigned to run for the US Senate . However, he lost this election to incumbent Claiborne Pell . Four years later, he successfully ran for Rhode Island's second seat in the US Senate. On December 29, 1976, he moved into Congress early because the Democratic incumbent John O. Pastore , who had not run again, resigned on that date. In 1982, 1988 and 1994, Chafee was confirmed, respectively.

During his time in the Senate, Chafee emerged primarily as an environmental politician; From 1995 to 1999 he was chairman of the Committee on Environment and Public Works , of which he had been a member since 1977. In 1999 he announced that he would not run again for the November 2000 election. However, he died of heart failure before the election on October 24, 1999 . His son Lincoln took the vacant seat and was elected to the Senate in 2000. He held this mandate until 2007; from 2011 to 2015, like his father, he was Governor of Rhode Island.

Awards

On August 9, 2000, Chafee was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom . The US Navy named one destroyer, the USS Chafee (DDG-90) , after the former Secretary of the Navy.

Web links

• John Chafee in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• John Chafee in the National Governors Association (English)
• John Chafee in the database of Find a Grave (English)