1. John William Warner III was an American lawyer and politician who served as the United States Secretary of the Navy from 1972 to 1974 and as a five-term Republican US Senator from Virginia from 1979 to 2009, and is both the longest serving Republican Senator from Virginia, and the second longest serving Senator from Virginia behind Democrat Harry F Byrd.
John Warner served as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee from 1999 to 2001, and from 2003 to 2007.
John Warner was a veteran of the Second World War and Korean War, and was one of five World War II veterans serving in the Senate at the time of his retirement.
John Warner grew up in the District, where he attended the elite St Albans School before graduating from Woodrow Wilson High School in February 1945.
John Warner enlisted in the United States Navy during World War II in January 1945, shortly before his 18th birthday.
John Warner served until the following year, leaving as a petty officer third class.
John Warner went to college at Washington and Lee University, where he was a member of Beta Theta Pi, graduating in 1949; he then entered the University of Virginia Law School.
John Warner joined the US Marine Corps in October 1950, after the outbreak of the Korean War, and served in Korea as a ground aircraft maintenance officer with the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing.
John Warner continued in the Marine Corps Reserves after the war, eventually reaching the rank of captain.
John Warner then resumed his studies, taking courses at the George Washington University before receiving his law degree from UVA in 1953.
Thereafter John Warner was appointed by President Gerald Ford as delegate to the Law of the Sea talks, and he negotiated the US-Soviet Incidents at Sea agreement which became a cause celebre of pro-Detente doves in US-Soviet relations.
John Warner was appointed by Gerald Ford to the post of Director of the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration.
John Warner entered politics in the 1978 Virginia election for US Senate.
However, when Obenshain died two months later in a plane crash, Warner was chosen to replace him and narrowly won the general election over Democrat Andrew P Miller, a former Attorney General of Virginia.
John Warner was in the Senate until January 3,2009.
John Warner was quite moderate, especially in comparison to most Republican Senators from the South.
John Warner was among the minority of Republicans to support some gun control laws.
John Warner voted for the Brady Bill and, in 1999, was one of only five Republicans to vote to close the so-called gun show loophole.
John Warner supported a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, but he raised concerns about the most recent Federal Marriage Amendment as being too restrictive, as it would have potentially banned civil unions as well.
In 1987, John Warner was one of the six Republicans who voted to reject the nomination of Robert Bork by President Ronald Reagan and the only Southern Republican to do so.
John Warner was re-elected easily in 1984 and 1990, and faced his first real challenge for re-election in 1996 from political newcomer Democrat Mark John Warner, a millionaire who vastly outspent the incumbent and produced an unusually close election.
On May 23,2005, John Warner was one of 14 centrist senators, dubbed the "Gang of 14," to forge a compromise on the Democrats' proposed use of the judicial filibuster, thus blocking the Republican leadership's attempt to implement the so-called nuclear option.
On September 17,2006, John Warner said that US military and intelligence personnel in future wars will suffer for abuses committed in 2006 by the US in the name of fighting terrorism.
John Warner feared that the administration's civilian lawyers and a president who never saw combat were putting US service personnel at risk of torture, summary executions and other atrocities by chipping away at Geneva Conventions' standards that have protected them since 1949.
John Warner's vote gave a retroactive, nine-year immunity to US officials who authorized, ordered, or committed acts of torture and abuse, permitting the use of statements obtained through torture to be used in military tribunals so long as the abuse took place by December 30,2005.
John Warner maintained that the new law holds true to "core principles" that the US provide fair trials and not be seen as undermining Geneva Conventions.
John Warner was a cosponsor of America's Climate Security Act of 2007, more commonly referred to as the Cap and Trade Bill, that proposed to ration carbon emissions in the US, and tax or purchase Carbon credits on the global market for greater US alignment with the Kyoto protocol standards and goals.
In September 2008, John Warner joined the Gang of 20, a bipartisan coalition seeking comprehensive energy reform.
In October 2008, John Warner voted in favor of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008.
John Warner was listed as a senior advisor at the website for the DC law firm, Hogan Lovells.
John Warner was in the firm's Global Regulatory practice group, and his specialties were Aerospace, Defense, and Government Services.
On September 28,2016, John Warner endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, praising Clinton's record of bipartisan cooperation.
John Warner did endorse Republican candidates Ed Gillespie for Governor in 2017 and Barbara Comstock for Virginia's 10th congressional district in 2018.
In 2020, John Warner endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden for President of the United States and Mark John Warner for his reelection bid to the Senate.
John Warner served as an Honorary Director on the Board of Directors at the Atlantic Council.
In 2008, John Warner delivered the Waldo Family Lecture on International Relations at Old Dominion University.
The John Warner Center is home to the Marine Corps Command and Staff College, School of Advanced Warfighting and College of Distance Education and Training, and the Brigadier General Simmons Center for Marine Corps History, including the archives of the Marine Corps and the history division.
John Warner was the sixth husband of actress Elizabeth Taylor, whom he married in December 1976, at the Second Presbyterian Church in Richmond, Virginia, before he was elected to the Senate.
John Warner was the last surviving, as well as the longest-lived, of Taylor's seven husbands.
John Warner was linked romantically to broadcast journalist Barbara Walters in the 1990s.
John Warner died from heart failure at his home in Alexandria, Virginia, on May 25,2021, at age 94.
John Warner's funeral was held June 23,2021, at Washington National Cathedral.