1. Philip Aloysius Hart was an American lawyer and politician.
20 Facts About Philip Hart
1. 2.
Philip Hart was known as the "Conscience of the Senate".
3.
The grandson of Irish immigrants, Philip Hart was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, to Philip Aloysius and Ann Hart.
4.
Philip Hart's father was a banker who served as president of the Bryn Mawr Trust Company.
5.
Philip Hart received his early education at Waldron Academy, and then attended West Philadelphia Catholic High School.
6.
Philip Hart studied at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, where he was the student body president and an award-winning debater.
7.
In June 1943, Philip Hart married Jane "Janey" Briggs, the daughter of Walter and Jane Cameron Briggs.
8.
Philip Hart's father was by then a philanthropist and had owned the Detroit Tigers.
9.
Philip Hart was buried in a family plot, followed decades later by his father nearby.
10.
Philip Hart was wounded during the D-Day invasion of Normandy on Utah Beach when shrapnel from an exploding artillery shell damaged the inside of his right arm.
11.
Philip Hart was decorated with the Bronze Star Medal with clusters, Arrowhead device, Purple Heart, and Croix de guerre.
12.
Philip Hart became politically active in the Democratic Party and, from 1949 to 1951, he served as Michigan's Corporation Securities Commissioner, a political appointee position.
13.
Philip Hart's duties included the approving of stock issues of corporations in the state, licensing real estate brokers and builders, and collecting real estate taxes.
14.
In 1951 Philip Hart was appointed as state director of the Office of Price Stabilization, serving for a year.
15.
Philip Hart next served from 1953 to 1954 as legal adviser to Governor G Mennen Williams, a former law school classmate.
16.
In 1954, Philip Hart ran for electoral office, elected as the 51st lieutenant governor of Michigan, on a ticket with Governor Williams.
17.
Philip Hart was reelected by overwhelming margins in 1964 and 1970.
18.
Philip Hart had announced his intention not to run for re-election in June 1976 and was diagnosed with cancer a month later.
19.
Philip Hart died of melanoma a few days later, just before his term would have expired, and he would have retired.
20.
Philip Hart is interred in St Anne's Catholic Cemetery on Mackinac Island in a family plot near his namesake son, who died as a toddler.