John Goodwin Tower

(1925-1991) The son of a Methodist minister, John Goodwin Tower was a veteran of World War II and a political science professor before entering politics. He joined the national political scene in 1960-1961 when he won the special election to fill Lyndon B. Johnson's U. S. Senate seat, becoming the first Republican senator from Texas since Reconstruction. Tower served in the Senate for 24 years, holding a number of influential committee assignments and chairmanships. He became the chief United States negotiator at the strategic arms reduction talks in Geneva after his retirement from the Senate in 1985. He later chaired the Tower Commission, which issued its report on the Iran-Contra Affair in 1987. Tower was serving as an advisor to President George Bush at the time of his death in an airplane crash. (1999)