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William Warren Scranton (b. July 19, 1917), He served as the Republican Governor of Pennsylvania from 1963 to 1967. From 1976 to 1977, he served as United States Ambassador to the United Nations.

William Scranton was born in Madison, Connecticut, while the Scranton family was on vacation at a cottage in New Haven County, Connecticut in 1917. He was the son of Worthington Scranton, a wealthy Pennsylvania businessman, and the grandson of Joseph A. Scranton , a U.S. Congressman from Pennsylvania. The Scranton family were the founders and patriarchs of the city of Scranton, Pennsylvania.

William suffered from asthma as a child and his health was always considered somewhat frail. He attended Yale University and later Yale Law School. He served as a pilot in the United States Army Air Corps during World War II.

Scranton practiced law and then entered the business community after the war becoming successful in several firms in northeastern Pennsylvania. He became active in Republican Party politics in the 1950s and came to the attention of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 1959, Eisenhower appointed Scranton as a special assistant to U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. Scranton served a little over a year before resigning to run for Congress.

Scranton’s name recognition and family connections helped him win a victory over an incumbent in a largely Democratic district. Scranton represented Pennsylvania's 10th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1961 to 1963. Though a freshman Republican, he quickly gained a reputation as an outspoken centrist and supported much of President John F. Kennedy’s social agenda including civil rights and the Peace Corps. The media quickly dubbed him a “Kennedy Republican”.

In 1962, the Republican party in Pennsylvania, which had lost the two previous gubernatorial elections and seen the states electoral voted go to Kennedy in the 1960 presidential election, became convinced that a moderate like Scranton would have enough bipartisan appeal to revitalize the party. He ran for Governor of Pennsylvania against Richardson Dilworth , the mayor of Philadelphia. The ticket was balanced by having Raymond P. Shafer, who would succeed him as governor, as his running mate. The Scranton/Shafer team won the a landslide victory in the election besting their opponents by nearly half a million votes out of just over than 6.6 million cast.

Although he did not actively seek the 1964 Republican nomination for President of the United States in the beginning, a “Draft Scranton” movement quickly gathered momentum among moderate Republicans who saw him as an alternative to ultraconservative frontrunner Senator Barry Goldwater. Scranton first declined to enter the race but later threw his hat into the ring on June 12, 1964. Scranton won the support of ten state delegations, but Goldwater went on to win the nomination on the first ballot.

Under existing Pennsylvania law, Scranton was limited to a single term and could not run for reelection. After his term in office, Scranton attended the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention of 1967-1968 and helped write a new constitution for the state. In 1968, President elect Richard Nixon asked Scranton to become Secretary of State, but he declined. He did serve as a special envoy to the Middle East but in this capacity he made several remarks and recommendations which some in the American Jewish community regarded as antisemitic and Nixon quickly distanced himself from the former governor.

After the Kent State shootings in 1970 Scranton was asked to chair the Commission on Student Unrest to investigate this and other incidents of campus violence. The committee’s conclusions came to be known as the “Scranton Report”.

He reentered the business world and served on the boards of several high profile American corporations such as A&P , IBM, The New York Times, Pan American Airways, and the H.J. Heinz Company and was president of Northeastern National Bank and Trust Company. He has also been associated with the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, and was a trustee of Yale University, his alma mater.

In 1976, he was chosen by President Gerald Ford to become United States Ambassador to the United Nations. His measured approach to diplomacy and genuine interest in human rights earned him much respect in his short time in office. Some in the Republican party pushed for Scranton to be named Ford’s running mate for the 1976 presidential election, but Ford chose Senator Robert Dole of Kansas instead. After his term as U.N. Ambassador, Scranton retired to his home in Dalton, Pennsylvania.

Scranton's son, William W. Scranton, III served as Pennsylvania's Lieutenant Governor under Richard Thornburgh. He ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1986 and is considered a leading candidate for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in 2006.

External Link

[http://www.nga.org/governors/1,1169,C_GOVERNOR_INFO^D_568,00.html National Governors Association Biography]

Categories: 1917 births | Governors of Pennsylvania | Ambassadors of the United States | American World War II veterans