John Tower: Difference between revisions
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{{CongBio|T000322}} Retrieved on 2008-02-08 |
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*[http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/ftoss Handbook of Texas article on John Tower] |
*[http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/ftoss Handbook of Texas article on John Tower] |
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*[http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/oralhistory.hom/ |
*[http://webarchive.loc.gov/all/20011116140659/http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/oralhistory.hom/tower/tower.asp Oral History Interviews with John Tower, from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library] |
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*{{C-SPAN|John Tower}} |
*{{C-SPAN|John Tower}} |
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*{{Find a Grave|8812|accessdate=2008-02-08}} |
*{{Find a Grave|8812|accessdate=2008-02-08}} |
Revision as of 02:04, 29 November 2017
John Tower | |
---|---|
Anne Armstrong | |
Succeeded by | Bobby Inman (Acting) |
Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee | |
In office January 3, 1981 – January 3, 1985 | |
Preceded by | John Stennis |
Succeeded by | Barry Goldwater |
United States Senator from Texas | |
In office June 15, 1961 – January 3, 1985 | |
Preceded by | Bill Blakley |
Succeeded by | Phil Gramm |
Personal details | |
Born | John Goodwin Tower September 29, 1925 Houston, Texas, U.S. |
Died | April 5, 1991 Brunswick, Georgia, U.S. | (aged 65)
Political party | Democratic (before 1951) Republican (1951–1991) |
Spouse(s) | Joza Bullington (1952–1976) Lilla Cummings (1977–1987) |
Children | 3 |
Education | Southwestern University (BA) Southern Methodist University (MA) London School of Economics |
Military service | |
Allegiance | United States |
Branch/service | United States Navy |
Years of service | 1943–1989 |
Rank | Master chief petty officer |
Unit | U.S. Naval Reserve |
Battles/wars | World War II • Pacific Theater |
John Goodwin Tower (September 29, 1925 – April 5, 1991) was the first
Born in
Upon joining the Senate, Tower became the only Republican Senator representing the South until Strom Thurmond switched parties in 1964. Tower staunchly opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Starting in 1976, Tower began to alienate many conservatives. He supported Gerald Ford rather than Ronald Reagan in the 1976 Republican primaries, supported legalized abortion, and opposed President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative.
Tower retired from the Senate in 1985. After leaving Congress, he served as chief negotiator of the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks with the Soviet Union and led the Tower Commission. The commission's report was highly critical of the Reagan administration's relations with Iran and the Contras. In 1989, incoming President George H. W. Bush chose Tower as his nominee for Secretary of Defense, but his nomination was rejected by the Senate. After the defeat, Tower chaired the President's Intelligence Advisory Board. Tower died in the 1991 Atlantic Southeast Airlines Flight 2311 crash.
Early life, education, and military service
Tower was born in
, in southeast Texas in the spring of 1942.Tower was active in politics as a child; at the age of thirteen, he passed out handbills for the campaign of
Tower left college in the summer of 1943 to serve in the Pacific Theater during World War II on an LCS(L) amphibious gunboat. He returned to Texas after the war in 1946, discharged as a seaman first class, and completed his undergraduate courses at Southwestern University, graduating in 1948 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science. While at Southwestern, Tower was a member of the Iota chapter of the Kappa Sigma Fraternity, and would later serve the organization in significant alumnus volunteer roles.[1] Tower worked as a radio announcer for a Country music station in Taylor, northeast of Austin, during college and for some time afterward. Tower remained in the Naval Reserve and achieved the rank of Master Chief Petty Officer, having retired from the military in 1989.[2]
In 1949, he moved to Dallas to take graduate courses at
Family life in Wichita Falls, Texas
John and Lou Tower had three children during their years in Wichita Falls born in three consecutive years: Penny (1954), Marian (1955–1991), and Jeanne (1956). The couple divorced in 1976.
During his time in Wichita Falls, Tower established his core political relationships, including Pierce Langford, III, a key figure in the financing of the British offshore pirate radio stations created between 1964 and 1967 by Don Pierson of Eastland, Texas. While at the London School of Economics, Tower put in an appearance at the offices of Swinging Radio England on Curzon Street.
Following his divorce from Lou, who remained single for the rest of her life, Tower married Lilla Burt Cummings in 1977. The couple separated in 1985 and divorced on July 2, 1986.
Rise to the Senate
Although raised as a
Johnson, the incumbent senator and famous nationwide as the
Johnson became Vice President, and Governor
In his second Senate campaign in a matter of months, Tower charged that the national Democratic Party, represented by Kennedy and Johnson, was far to the
With help from his friend
- (1) The first Republican U.S. senator from Texas since Reconstruction
- (2) The first Republican elected to any statewide office from Texas since Reconstruction
- (3) The third Republican from the former Confederacy since Reconstruction
- (4) The first Republican from a former Confederate state since Newell Sanders of Tennessee left office in 1913 (a gap of forty-eight years)
- (5) The first Republican from the former Confederacy ever to win a Senate seat by popular election.
The final total was 448,217 votes (50.6 percent) for Tower and 437,872 (49.4 percent) for Blakely, a margin of 10,343 ballots.
United States Senate
During his first term, Tower was the only Republican Senator from the South until the defection in 1964 of Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. Tower was a leading opponent of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.[6]
In the Senate, Tower was assigned to two major committees: the Labor and Public Welfare Committee and the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. Tower left the Labor and Public Welfare Committee in 1964, although in 1965 he was named to the
Quarrels with conservatives
Tower quarreled with State Senator Henry Grover of Houston, the 1972 Republican gubernatorial nominee, to such an extent that the intraparty divisions may have contributed to Grover's 100,000-vote defeat by Democrat Dolph Briscoe of Uvalde, even as Tower was winning a third Senate term by nearly 311,000 votes.
Once considered a solid
By virtue of their primary defeat, the Texas Ford supporters were shut out of the national convention in Kansas City. Angelo recalls Tower as having "begged" for a delegate slot because he was a U.S. senator and was supposed to be the Ford floor leader at the convention. Angelo said that Tower could have been a delegate if he were to support Reagan, an impossible condition for Tower because of his early commitment to President Ford. Tower hence was not a delegate to the 1976 convention because Angelo was mindful that a close convention showdown could have been decided by a handful of delegate votes. Angelo said that he always personally liked and admired Tower though they disagreed on some issues: "John was the best extemporaneous speaker and solid as a rock on most issues." Tower had campaigned for Angelo in the latter's unsuccessful race in 1968 for the Texas State Senate. As time passed though, Tower alienated the conservative wing of his party with his support for legalised abortion and opposition to Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative.[9] Barbara Staff, the Reagan co-chairman for Dallas County and North Texas, recalls that Tower spent much of his time at the convention with the closely divided Mississippi delegation and did not address the phalanx of Reagan backers in his own state's delegation. Among the Reagan backers was Betty Andujar of Fort Worth, the first Republican woman to serve in the State Senate.[10]
Tower developed a close relationship with
Subsequent elections
Tower was reelected three times – in 1966, 1972, and 1978, all of which were good years for Republican candidates. In 1966, Tower defeated Democratic Attorney General
In 1972, Tower defeated
In 1974, Tower supported the Republican former
In 1978, Tower ran in a close campaign. He edged out Democratic Congressman
Post-senate career
Tower retired from the Senate after nearly twenty-four years in office. He continued to be involved in national politics, advising the campaigns of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. Two weeks after his leaving office, Tower was named chief United States negotiator at the
In November 1986, President Reagan asked Tower to chair the President's Special Review Board to study the action of the
In 1989, Tower was President George H. W. Bush's choice to become Secretary of Defense. In a stunning move, particularly since Tower was himself a former Senate colleague, the Senate rejected his nomination. The largest factors were concern about possible conflicts of interest and Tower's personal life, in particular allegations of alcohol abuse and womanizing.[13][14] The Senate vote was 47–53,[15] and it marked the first time that the Senate had rejected a Cabinet nominee of a newly elected president.[16]
As The New York Times reported in his obituary, "Mr. Tower's repudiation by his former colleagues, who rejected him as President Bush's nominee for Secretary of Defense after public allegations of womanizing and heavy drinking, left a bitterness that could not be assuaged. In the normally clubby Senate, Mr. Tower was regarded by some colleagues as a gut fighter who did not suffer fools gladly, and some lawmakers indicated that they were only too pleased to rebuke him."[14]
In response to the alcohol allegations, Tower told The New York Times in 1990: "Have I ever drunk to excess? Yes. Am I alcohol-dependent? No. Have I always been a good boy? Of course not. But I've never done anything disqualifying. That's the point."[14]
After Tower's defeat, he was instead named chairman of the
Death
On April 5, 1991, Tower was aboard Atlantic Southeast Airlines Flight 2311 when it crashed while on approach for landing at Brunswick, Georgia. The crash immediately killed everyone on board, including Tower and his middle daughter, Marian, the astronaut Sonny Carter, and twenty others.[17] An investigation determined that the crash resulted from failure of the plane's propeller control unit, but was a very mysterious and still unsolved plane crash which caused the pilots to lose control of the aircraft.[18]
Tower and his daughter are buried together at the family plot of the Sparkman-Hillcrest Memorial Park Cemetery in Dallas. A cenotaph in Tower's honor was erected at the Texas State Cemetery in Austin. Tower's personal and political life are chronicled in his autobiography, Consequences: A Personal and Political Memoir, published a few months before his death. He donated his papers to his alma mater, Southwestern University.[19]
See also
References
- ^ John G. Tower Award Winners, p14 Archived 2014-06-28 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Biographical Sketch of John Goodwin Tower, Southwestern University (retrieved on September 25, 2008)
- ^ Sue Watkins, The Alcade, 1965. books.google.com. May 1965. Retrieved March 13, 2011.
- ^ Rupert Norval Richardson, Ernest Wallace, and Adrian N. Anderson, Texas: The Lone Star State (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1970) p. 369.
- ^ Knaggs, John R. (1986). Two-Party Texas: The John Tower Era, 1961–1984. Eakin Press.[page needed]
- ISBN 9780691025391.
- ^ Billy Hathorn, "Mayor Ernest Angelo, Jr. of Midland and the 96-0 Reagan Sweep of Texas, May 1, 1976," West Texas Historical Association Yearbook Vol. 86 (2010), p. 85
- ^ Laredo Morning Times, May 2, 1976
- ^ Hathorn, "Mayor Ernest Angelo", pg. 86
- Dallas Morning News, August 19, 1976, pg. 6A
- ^ Kirkpatrick, David D. (May 29, 2008). "Taste of Senate Set Capt. McCain on a New Path". The New York Times. Retrieved May 7, 2010.
- ^ John G. Tower, Consequendes: A Personal and Political Memoir, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1990, pg. 208
- ^ Oreskes, Michael (10 March 1989). "SENATE REJECTS TOWER, 53-47; FIRST CABINET VETO SINCE '59; BUSH CONFERS ON NEW CHOICE". New York Times. Retrieved 5 October 2014.
- ^ a b c Tolchin, Martin (April 6, 1991). "John G. Tower, 65, Longtime Senator From Texas". The New York Times.
- ^ "U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 101st Congress – 1st Session". United States Senate. 1989-03-09. Retrieved 2012-11-15.
- ^ "US Senate Nominations". www.senate.gov. United States Senate. Retrieved 19 January 2017.
Though not stated specifically, we can check by process of elimination that this is correct. - ^ Schneider, Keith (April 7, 1991). "Inquiry Begins Into Georgia Plane Crash". New York Times. Retrieved 2007-12-18.
- ^ "Atlantic Southeast Airlines, Inc., Flight 2311, Uncontrolled Collision With Terrain, an Embraer EMB-120, N270AS, Brunswick, Georgia, April 5, 1991" (PDF). National Transportation Safety Board. April 28, 1992. Retrieved February 5, 2016.
{{cite journal}}
: Cite journal requires|journal=
(help) - ^ "John G. Tower Papers". Southwestern University. Retrieved 2012-11-15.
General
- Cunningham, Sean P. (2010). Cowboy Conservatism: Texas and the Rise of the Modern Right.
- Finley, Keith (2008). Delaying the Dream: Southern Senators Fight against Civil Rights, 1938–1965. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
- Bennetts, Leslie (September 1991). "Remember the Alamo." Vanity Fair. p. 114-
External links
- United States Congress. "John Tower (id: T000322)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. Retrieved on 2008-02-08
- Handbook of Texas article on John Tower
- Oral History Interviews with John Tower, from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library
- Appearances on C-SPAN
- "John Tower". Find a Grave. Retrieved 2008-02-08.
- Southwestern University and SMU's John G. Tower Digital Media Collection contains videos and audios by John Tower throughout his career.
- Booknotes interview with Roger Gittines on Consequences: John G. Tower, A Personal and Political Memoir, June 30, 1991.
- John G. Tower Papers – Official repository for John Tower's Senate and personal papers, Special Collections, Southwestern University.
- Speech by John Tower given on November 11, 1970. Audio recording from The University of Alabama's Emphasis Symposium on Contemporary Issues
- Brunswick, GA Commuter Plane Crash Kills John Tower, Sonny Carter, and 21 others, Apr 1991 article at GenDisasters.com