1. William Warren Scranton was an American Republican Party politician and diplomat.
41 Facts About William Scranton
1. 2.
William Scranton won election to the United States House of Representatives in 1960 and gained a reputation as an outspoken moderate during his time in Congress.
3.
William Scranton won the Republican nomination in Pennsylvania's 1962 gubernatorial election, defeating Democrat Richardson Dilworth in the general election.
4.
William Scranton entered the race for the 1964 Republican presidential nomination after the collapse of Nelson Rockefeller's candidacy, but Barry Goldwater won the nomination.
5.
William Scranton was term-limited out of office in 1967 but remained active in politics.
6.
William Scranton chaired the President's Commission on Campus Unrest, served as a member of the transition team for President Gerald Ford, and served as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations from 1976 to 1977.
7.
William Scranton served on the boards of several high-profile corporations and was associated with the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations.
8.
William Scranton was born on July 19,1917, while the Scranton family was on vacation at a cottage in Madison, Connecticut.
9.
William Scranton was the son of Worthington Scranton, a wealthy Pennsylvania businessman who was the president of the Scranton Gas and Water Company, and Marion Margery Scranton, a member of the Republican National Committee for over two decades.
10.
William Scranton feared that the stress of campaigning would be detrimental to his frail health.
11.
William Scranton died just before her son's election to Congress in 1960.
12.
William Scranton was the grandnephew of Joseph A Scranton, a Representative from Pennsylvania.
13.
William Scranton was a nephew by marriage of former US Supreme Court Justice David Davis, a confidante of President Abraham Lincoln.
14.
William Scranton's cousins included Edward Curtis Smith, who served as governor.
15.
William Warren Scranton resided with his parents for many years at Marworth, an estate in Dalton, Pennsylvania, that was located roughly eight miles north of Scranton.
16.
William Scranton began his education at the William Scranton Country Day School, which had been founded by his parents, completing his basic schooling at the Fessenden School in Newton, Massachusetts, and attended the prestigious Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut.
17.
William Scranton attended Yale Law School from 1939 to 1941, dropping out in advance of World War II, enlisting in the United States Army Air Corps and serving as an Air Transport Command pilot during the war.
18.
William Scranton was honorably discharged from the military as a captain, but was active in the US Air Force Reserves for two decades thereafter.
19.
William Scranton graduated in 1946 and was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in August of that year.
20.
William Scranton practiced law and then entered the business community after the war becoming successful in several firms in northeastern Pennsylvania.
21.
William Scranton joined the largest correspondence school in the United States, International Correspondence Schools in 1949 as its Vice President for legal affairs.
22.
William Scranton left that post in 1954, but later served on the board of directors, as had his father.
23.
William Scranton became active in Republican Party politics in the 1950s and came to the attention of President Dwight Eisenhower.
24.
William Scranton served a little over a year before resigning to run for Congress.
25.
William Scranton represented Pennsylvania's 10th Congressional District in the US House of Representatives from 1961 to 1963.
26.
In 1962, the Pennsylvania Republican Party, which had lost the two previous gubernatorial elections and seen the state's electoral votes go to Kennedy in the 1960 presidential election, became convinced that a moderate like William Scranton, would have enough bipartisan appeal to revitalize the party.
27.
The Chester school protests in Chester, Pennsylvania, in the spring of 1964 led by George Raymond of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and Stanley Branche of the Committee for Freedom Now against the de facto segregation of public schools prompted William Scranton to implement the Pennsylvania Human Relations commission.
28.
William Scranton supported the formation of the Greater Chester Movement, an umbrella organization intended to coordinate activities of groups working toward the betterment of Chester.
29.
William Scranton first declined to enter the race but later threw his hat into the ring on June 12,1964.
30.
William Scranton won the support of ten state delegations, but Goldwater went on to win the nomination on the first ballot.
31.
Under the then-existing Pennsylvania law, William Scranton was limited to a single term and could not run for reelection in 1966.
32.
William Scranton did serve as a special envoy to the Middle East but when he said the Nixon Administration should be "more evenhanded" in managing the problems of the Middle East, some in the American Jewish community regarded this as antisemitic and Nixon quickly distanced himself from the former governor.
33.
William Scranton was associated with the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, and was a trustee of Yale University, his alma mater.
34.
In 1976, William Scranton was chosen by President Ford to become United States Ambassador to the United Nations.
35.
William Scranton was sworn-in in the Oval Office on March 15,1976.
36.
William Scranton's measured approach to diplomacy and genuine interest in human rights earned him much respect in his short time in office.
37.
Some in the Republican Party pushed for William Scranton to be named Ford's running mate for the 1976 presidential election, but Ford chose Senator Robert Dole of Kansas instead.
38.
Scranton's son, William Scranton III, served as Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania under Richard Thornburgh.
39.
William Scranton ran unsuccessfully for governor in the 1986 election and was for a while considered a leading candidate for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in the 2006 election but ultimately dropped out of the race.
40.
William Scranton was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1997.
41.
Nine days after his 96th birthday, William Scranton died on July 28,2013, from a cerebral hemorrhage at a retirement community in Montecito, California, where he lived with his wife.