He was an outspoken critic of one war, but a hero in another. He was a leading Democrat who came from Republican roots. He was a politician who cared more about being on the right side of an issue than on the popular side.
George Stanley McGovern -- a staunch liberal who served South Dakota in the U.S. Senate and House for more than two decades and who ran unsuccessfully as the Democratic Party nominee for president in 1972 -- died Sunday at the age of 90, his family said.
"Our wonderful father, George McGovern, passed away peacefully at the Dougherty Hospice House in Sioux Falls, SD, surrounded by our family and life-long friends," his family said in a statement.
Democrat George S. McGovern, a war hero who opposed the Vietnam War, was crushed by President Richard Nixon's Watergate-tainted campaign. A die-hard idealist, McGovern inspired scores of budding politicians.
George S. McGovern, an icon of American liberalism who campaigned for the White House with moral fervor against President Richard M. Nixon and the Vietnam War but lost in a thundering landslide, has died. He was 90.
McGovern died Sunday morning while under hospice care in Sioux Falls, S.D., said family spokesman Steve Hildebrand. He had been hospitalized for various illnesses and injuries since suffering a serious fall last December
George Stanley McGovern, a stalwart liberal from South Dakota who served in the U.S. House and Senate for many years, died Sunday. Following are biographical details and highlights of his career.
Personal:
• Birth date: July 19, 1922
• Birth place: Avon, South Dakota
• Parents: Joseph, minister, and Frances (McLean) McGovern
• Marriage: Eleanor (Stegeberg) McGovern
• Children: Mary, Steven, Teresa (d. 1994 at age 45), Susan, Ann
• Education: Dakota Wesleyan University, B.A., 1945
Northwestern University, M.A., 1949; Ph.D., 1953
• Military service: U.S. Army Air Forces, 1943 - 1945, 1st Lieutenant.
• Religion: Methodist
Opinion: McGovern, a strong man who overcame defeat
Other Facts:
• He interrupted his college studies to enlist in the military right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
• McGovern flew a B-24 in 35 combat missions over Europe during World War II and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.
Timeline:
• 1949 - 1953 - Assistant professor of history and political science at Dakota Wesleyan University in Mitchell, South Dakota, his alma mater.
• 1953 - 1955 - Executive secretary of the South Dakota Democratic Party.
• 1957 - 1961 - U.S. Representative, representing South Dakota's First District.
• 1961 - 1962 - Director of Food for Peace Program and special assistant to President John F. Kennedy.
• 1962 - Elected to the U.S. Senate. Re-elected in 1968 and 1974.
• September 1971 - Embarks on a fact-finding mission to South Vietnam regarding American involvement in the Vietnam War.
• 1972 - Named as the Democratic Party's nominee for president. His presidential campaign is based on his opposition to the Vietnam War.
• 1972 - Loses the presidential election to Richard Nixon by a landslide (60.7% to 37.5%), carrying only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia, for 17 Electoral College votes.
• 1975 - Is widely criticized for visiting Cuban leader Fidel Castro in Havana as an attempt to improve U.S.-Cuban relations.
• 1980 - Loses re-election to a fourth term as senator.
• September 13, 1983 - Announces his candidacy for president in the 1984 election.
• March 14, 1984 - Drops out of the presidential race after a third-place finish in the Massachusetts primary.
• April 14, 1984 - Hosts "Saturday Night Live."
• 1991 - 1998 - President of the Middle East Policy Council.
• 1994 - Establishes the McGovern Family Foundation to fund research on alcoholism after his daughter Teresa's death.
• 1998 - 2001 - U.S. ambassador to United Nations Agencies on Food and Agriculture.
• August 9, 2000 - Awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton.
• 2000 - McGovern and former Sen. Bob Dole establish a program to provide school lunches for poor children in developing countries. The McGovern-Dole Program is signed into law in 2002 by President George W. Bush.
• 2001 - United Nations global ambassador on world hunger.
• October 7, 2006 - The George and Eleanor McGovern Library and Center for Public Leadership and Justice is dedicated on the Dakota Wesleyan University campus.
• January 12, 2007 - Delivers an anti-Iraq war speech to House Democrats.
• October 16, 2008 - Receives the World Food Prize (with Bob Dole) at a ceremony at the Iowa state Capitol in Des Moines.
• October 25-27, 2011 - Hospitalized in South Dakota for fatigue.
• December 2, 2011 - Taken to a South Dakota hospital after falling at Dakota Wesleyan University.
• April 2012 - Treated in a Florida hospital for "brief transient spells where he passes out and becomes verbally unresponsive."
• October 15, 2012 - Admitted to the Dougherty Hospice House in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
• October 21, 2012 - Dies at the Dougherty Hospice House at the age of 90.
Opinion: Ahead of his time
Publications:
"War against Want: America's Food for Peace Program," 1964
"A Time of War, a Time of Peace," 1968
"The Great Coalfield War," with Leonard Guttridge, 1972
"McGovern: The Man and His Beliefs," 1972
"An American Journey: The Presidential Campaign Speeches of George McGovern," 1974
"Withdrawal of U.S. Troops from Korea," with Richard Stilwell, 1977
"Grassroots: The Autobiography of George McGovern," 1977
"Terry: My Daughter's Life-and-Death Struggle with Alcoholism," 1997
"The Third Freedom: Ending Hunger in Our Time," 2001
"Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now," 2006
"Leadership and Service: An Introduction," 2008
"Abraham Lincoln," 2008
"What It Means to Be a Democrat," 2011
Politicians pay tribute
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — George McGovern once joked that he had wanted to run for president in the worst way — and that he had done so.
It was a campaign in 1972 dishonored by Watergate, a scandal that fully unfurled too late to knock Republican President Richard M. Nixon from his place as a commanding favorite for re-election. The South Dakota senator tried to make an issue out of the bungled attempt to wiretap the offices of the Democratic National Committee, calling Nixon the most corrupt president in history.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2012/10/21/george-mcgovern-obituary/1641975/
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/oct/21/local/la-me-george-mcgovern-20121021
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/22/us/politics/george-mcgovern-a-democratic-presidential-nominee-and-liberal-stalwart-dies-at-90.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/21/us/george-mcgovern-dead/index.html
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