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{{Infobox officeholder
|name=John Goodwin Tower
|birth_place=[[Houston, Texas]]
|birth_date=September 29, 1925
|death_place=Brunswick, [[Georgia]]
|death_date=April 5, 1991
|spouse=(1) Joza "Lou" Bullington Tower (married 1952-1976, divorced)<br>
(2) Lila Burt Cummings Tower (married 1977-1986, divorced)
|religion=[[United Methodist]]
|children=Penny (born 1954)<br>
Marian (1955–1991)<br>
Jeanne (born 1956)
|occupation=[[Political science]] [[professor]]<br>
Political consultant
|party=[[Democratic Party|Democrat]]-turned-[[Republican Party|Republican]] (1951)
|office=[[United States Senator]] for [[Texas]]
|term_start=June 15, 1961
|term_end=January 3, 1985
|preceded=William A. "Bill" Blakely
|succeeded=[[Phil Gramm]]
}}
'''John Goodwin Tower''' (September 29, 1925 – April 5, 1991) was the first [[Republican Party|Republican]] elected by popular vote to represent any state of the former [[Confederate States of America|Confederacy]] in the [[United States Senate]] since [[Reconstruction]]. He represented his native [[Texas]] in the upper legislative chamber from 1961 to 1985.
==Background==
Born in [[Houston, Texas|Houston]] to a [[Methodist]] pastor, Joe Z. Tower, John Tower served in the [[United States Navy]] during [[World War II]] and thereafter until 1989 in the Naval Reserve. He graduated from Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, and studied at the London School of Economics in [[London]], [[England]]. He switched from the [[Democratic Party]] in 1951, and five years later contested, unsuccessfully, for a seat in the Texas House of Representative from [[Wichita Falls]] and to back [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]]'s re-election to the presidency. In 1960, he polled 41 percent of the vote in a Republican campaign against Senator [[Lyndon B. Johnson]], who was also running for [[Vice President of the United States|vice president]] on the ticket headed by [[John F. Kennedy]]. Upon his election as vice president, Johnson resigned from the Senate and Governor Price Daniel, Sr., appointed a [[conservative]] Democrat]], William A. "Bill" Blakely of [[Dallas]] as the interim senator. In a two-round special election in the spring of 1961, Tower prevailed by a narrow margin over Blakely, who had also been an interim senator in 1957, when the outgoing Senator Price Daniel became governor. Several prominent Democrats went down to defeat in the special election, including future U.S. House Speaker James C. "Jim" Wright of [[Fort Worth]] and the [[San Antonio]] Hispanic firebrand, Henry B. Gonzalez.
==Political life==
Tower went on to win full six-year senatorial terms in 1966 against the Democrats Waggonner Carr of [[Lubbock]], in 1972 against Harold Barefoot Sanders, Jr., of Dallas, and in 1978 against later interim Senator Robert Krueger of [[New Braunfels]]. In the 1972 campaign, he quarreled over tactics with the unsuccessful Republican gubernatorial nominee, [[Henry C. Grover]] of Houston. He did not run in 1984 and was succeeded early the next year by fellow Republican [[Phil Gramm]].
For three years, Tower was he only Republican Senator from the South until [[Strom Thurmond]] of [[South Carolina]] switched parties in 1964. Tower opposed the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]] and the [[Voting Rights Act of 1965]]. He was considered for years as one of the most [[conservative]] members of the Senate. But in 1976, Tower began to alienate many conservatives by his support of [[Gerald Ford]], rather than [[Ronald Reagan]] in the 1976 Republican presidential primaries. Reagan won every Texas delegate in the Texas Republican presidential primary and four at-large delegates chosen at the state convention, but he narrowly lost the party nomination to Ford at the convention held that year in [[Kansas City]], [[Missouri]] though Ford was ultimately unseated by [[Jimmy Carter]]. [[Ernest Angelo]], one of three co-chairmen of the 1976 Reagan campaign in Texas and a former mayor of [[Midland]], recalls a visit with Tower in 1975, when Angelo informed Tower that he would be working in the Reagan campaign. Angelo recalls Tower as having told him that supporting Reagan would be a "dumb thing to do".<ref>Billy Hathorn, "Mayor Ernest Angelo, Jr. of Midland and the 96-0 Reagan Sweep of Texas, May 1, 1976," ''[[West Texas Historical Association]] Yearbook'' Vol. 86 (2010), p. 85.</ref> At the time, all Republican U.S. senators except [[Jesse Helms]] of [[North Carolina]] and [[Paul Laxalt]] of [[Nevada]] were committed to Ford. Tower blamed Ford's defeat in Texas on "[[Dixiecrat]]s ... the Reagan organization, aided by former [[George Wallace]] leaders, made a concerted and obviously successful effort to get the Wallace vote in the Republican primary. In addition, some section of Ford's defense and foreign policy alienated some voters who may otherwise have cast their ballot for the president."<ref>''[[Laredo Morning Times]]'', May 2, 1976.</ref>
By virtue of their primary defeat, the Texas Ford supporters were shut out of the national convention in Kansas City. Angelo recalls Tower as having "begged" for a delegate slot because he was a U.S. senator and was supposed to be the Ford floor leader at the convention. Angelo said that Tower could have been a delegate if he were to support Reagan, an impossible stipulation. Tower hence was not a delegate to the 1976 convention because Angelo was mindful that a close convention showdown could have been decided by a handful of delegate votes. Angelo said that he always personally liked and admired Tower though they disagreed on some issues: "John was the best extemporaneous speaker and solid as a rock on most issues." Tower had campaigned for Angelo in the latter's unsuccessful race in 1968 for the Texas State Senate. As time passed though, Tower alienated the conservative wing of his party with his support for legalized [[abortion]] and opposition to Reagan's [[Strategic Defense Initiative]].<ref>Hathorn, "Mayor Ernest Angelo", pg. 86.</ref> Barbara Staff, the Reagan co-chairman for Dallas County and North Texas, recalls that Tower spent much of his time at the convention with the closely divided [[Mississippi]] delegation and did not address the phalanx of Reagan backers in his own state's delegation. Among the Reagan backers was Betty Andujar of Fort Worth, the first Republican woman to serve in the State Senate.<ref>"Convention Notes: No love lost between Texans, [[Betty Ford]]", ''Dallas Morning News'', August 19, 1976, pg. 6A.</ref>
After he left the Senate, Tower was chief negotiator of the [[Strategic Arms Reduction Talks]] with the former [[Soviet Union]] and led the Tower Commission, which issued a report highly critical of the Reagan administration's relations with the [[Contras]] and [[Iran]]. In 1989, incoming President [[George H. W. Bush]] chose Tower as his nominee for [[United States Secretary of Defense|Secretary of Defense]], but his nomination was rejected by the Senate after charges of drinking and womanizing surfaced. The opposition of [[Sam Nunn]], the [[Georgia]] senator, solidified the Democrats against the nomination. After this defeat, Tower chaired the [[President's Intelligence Advisory Board]].
==Surprise death==
Tower was first married to the former Joza "Lou" Bullington (1920-2001), a distant relative of former Texas Republican gubernatorial nominee Orville Bullington of Wichita Falls, where the Towers had lived in the early years of their marriage while she was their church pianist and he was a political science professor at Midwestern State University. The couple had three daughters. Lou often campaigned with Tower in his the early races. In 1977, Tower wed the former Lila Burt Cummings, from whom he was divorced in 1986 in a bitter split.
Tower died with one of his daughters, Marian, in the 1991 crash of Atlantic Southeast Airlines Flight 2311 in Brunswick, Georgia, while the two were on a promotional tour for Tower's ''Consequences: A Personal and Political Memoir'', published a few months before the crash.
He donated his papers to his alma mater, Southwestern University.<ref>{{cite web|title=John G. Tower Papers|publisher=Southwestern University|url=http://southwestern.edu/infoservices/departments/specialcollections/tower/index.php|accessdate=November 15, 2012}}</ref>
John and Lou Tower and daughter Marian are interred at Sparkman-Hillcrest Memorial Park Cemetery in Dallas. John and Lou are not buried side by side. A cenotaph in Tower's honor was erected at the Texas State Cemetery in the capital city of [[Austin]].
Tower's impact on Texas politics continues through the success of three prominent Republicans, [[John Cornyn]], who holds the old Tower seat, former state Representative Dan H. Branch of Dallas, who sits on the board of the John Goodwin Tower Center for Political Studies at [[Southern Methodist University]] and lost an intra-party challenge to [[Ken Paxton]] in 2014 for the office of Texas attorney general, and [[Joe Straus]] of San Antonio, the Texas House Speaker since 2009 who holds his position through an alliance with all of the chamber's Democratic members. Straus was once a youthful chauffeur for Senator Tower.
==References==
{{reflist}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tower, John}}
[[Category:Texas]]
[[Category:Politicians]]
[[Category:U.S. Senators]]
[[Category:Republicans]]
[[Category:Former Democrats]]
[[Category:Methodists]]
[[Category:Professors]]
[[Category:United States Navy]]
[[Category:World War II]]
[[Category:American Authors]]
|name=John Goodwin Tower
|birth_place=[[Houston, Texas]]
|birth_date=September 29, 1925
|death_place=Brunswick, [[Georgia]]
|death_date=April 5, 1991
|spouse=(1) Joza "Lou" Bullington Tower (married 1952-1976, divorced)<br>
(2) Lila Burt Cummings Tower (married 1977-1986, divorced)
|religion=[[United Methodist]]
|children=Penny (born 1954)<br>
Marian (1955–1991)<br>
Jeanne (born 1956)
|occupation=[[Political science]] [[professor]]<br>
Political consultant
|party=[[Democratic Party|Democrat]]-turned-[[Republican Party|Republican]] (1951)
|office=[[United States Senator]] for [[Texas]]
|term_start=June 15, 1961
|term_end=January 3, 1985
|preceded=William A. "Bill" Blakely
|succeeded=[[Phil Gramm]]
}}
'''John Goodwin Tower''' (September 29, 1925 – April 5, 1991) was the first [[Republican Party|Republican]] elected by popular vote to represent any state of the former [[Confederate States of America|Confederacy]] in the [[United States Senate]] since [[Reconstruction]]. He represented his native [[Texas]] in the upper legislative chamber from 1961 to 1985.
==Background==
Born in [[Houston, Texas|Houston]] to a [[Methodist]] pastor, Joe Z. Tower, John Tower served in the [[United States Navy]] during [[World War II]] and thereafter until 1989 in the Naval Reserve. He graduated from Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, and studied at the London School of Economics in [[London]], [[England]]. He switched from the [[Democratic Party]] in 1951, and five years later contested, unsuccessfully, for a seat in the Texas House of Representative from [[Wichita Falls]] and to back [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]]'s re-election to the presidency. In 1960, he polled 41 percent of the vote in a Republican campaign against Senator [[Lyndon B. Johnson]], who was also running for [[Vice President of the United States|vice president]] on the ticket headed by [[John F. Kennedy]]. Upon his election as vice president, Johnson resigned from the Senate and Governor Price Daniel, Sr., appointed a [[conservative]] Democrat]], William A. "Bill" Blakely of [[Dallas]] as the interim senator. In a two-round special election in the spring of 1961, Tower prevailed by a narrow margin over Blakely, who had also been an interim senator in 1957, when the outgoing Senator Price Daniel became governor. Several prominent Democrats went down to defeat in the special election, including future U.S. House Speaker James C. "Jim" Wright of [[Fort Worth]] and the [[San Antonio]] Hispanic firebrand, Henry B. Gonzalez.
==Political life==
Tower went on to win full six-year senatorial terms in 1966 against the Democrats Waggonner Carr of [[Lubbock]], in 1972 against Harold Barefoot Sanders, Jr., of Dallas, and in 1978 against later interim Senator Robert Krueger of [[New Braunfels]]. In the 1972 campaign, he quarreled over tactics with the unsuccessful Republican gubernatorial nominee, [[Henry C. Grover]] of Houston. He did not run in 1984 and was succeeded early the next year by fellow Republican [[Phil Gramm]].
For three years, Tower was he only Republican Senator from the South until [[Strom Thurmond]] of [[South Carolina]] switched parties in 1964. Tower opposed the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]] and the [[Voting Rights Act of 1965]]. He was considered for years as one of the most [[conservative]] members of the Senate. But in 1976, Tower began to alienate many conservatives by his support of [[Gerald Ford]], rather than [[Ronald Reagan]] in the 1976 Republican presidential primaries. Reagan won every Texas delegate in the Texas Republican presidential primary and four at-large delegates chosen at the state convention, but he narrowly lost the party nomination to Ford at the convention held that year in [[Kansas City]], [[Missouri]] though Ford was ultimately unseated by [[Jimmy Carter]]. [[Ernest Angelo]], one of three co-chairmen of the 1976 Reagan campaign in Texas and a former mayor of [[Midland]], recalls a visit with Tower in 1975, when Angelo informed Tower that he would be working in the Reagan campaign. Angelo recalls Tower as having told him that supporting Reagan would be a "dumb thing to do".<ref>Billy Hathorn, "Mayor Ernest Angelo, Jr. of Midland and the 96-0 Reagan Sweep of Texas, May 1, 1976," ''[[West Texas Historical Association]] Yearbook'' Vol. 86 (2010), p. 85.</ref> At the time, all Republican U.S. senators except [[Jesse Helms]] of [[North Carolina]] and [[Paul Laxalt]] of [[Nevada]] were committed to Ford. Tower blamed Ford's defeat in Texas on "[[Dixiecrat]]s ... the Reagan organization, aided by former [[George Wallace]] leaders, made a concerted and obviously successful effort to get the Wallace vote in the Republican primary. In addition, some section of Ford's defense and foreign policy alienated some voters who may otherwise have cast their ballot for the president."<ref>''[[Laredo Morning Times]]'', May 2, 1976.</ref>
By virtue of their primary defeat, the Texas Ford supporters were shut out of the national convention in Kansas City. Angelo recalls Tower as having "begged" for a delegate slot because he was a U.S. senator and was supposed to be the Ford floor leader at the convention. Angelo said that Tower could have been a delegate if he were to support Reagan, an impossible stipulation. Tower hence was not a delegate to the 1976 convention because Angelo was mindful that a close convention showdown could have been decided by a handful of delegate votes. Angelo said that he always personally liked and admired Tower though they disagreed on some issues: "John was the best extemporaneous speaker and solid as a rock on most issues." Tower had campaigned for Angelo in the latter's unsuccessful race in 1968 for the Texas State Senate. As time passed though, Tower alienated the conservative wing of his party with his support for legalized [[abortion]] and opposition to Reagan's [[Strategic Defense Initiative]].<ref>Hathorn, "Mayor Ernest Angelo", pg. 86.</ref> Barbara Staff, the Reagan co-chairman for Dallas County and North Texas, recalls that Tower spent much of his time at the convention with the closely divided [[Mississippi]] delegation and did not address the phalanx of Reagan backers in his own state's delegation. Among the Reagan backers was Betty Andujar of Fort Worth, the first Republican woman to serve in the State Senate.<ref>"Convention Notes: No love lost between Texans, [[Betty Ford]]", ''Dallas Morning News'', August 19, 1976, pg. 6A.</ref>
After he left the Senate, Tower was chief negotiator of the [[Strategic Arms Reduction Talks]] with the former [[Soviet Union]] and led the Tower Commission, which issued a report highly critical of the Reagan administration's relations with the [[Contras]] and [[Iran]]. In 1989, incoming President [[George H. W. Bush]] chose Tower as his nominee for [[United States Secretary of Defense|Secretary of Defense]], but his nomination was rejected by the Senate after charges of drinking and womanizing surfaced. The opposition of [[Sam Nunn]], the [[Georgia]] senator, solidified the Democrats against the nomination. After this defeat, Tower chaired the [[President's Intelligence Advisory Board]].
==Surprise death==
Tower was first married to the former Joza "Lou" Bullington (1920-2001), a distant relative of former Texas Republican gubernatorial nominee Orville Bullington of Wichita Falls, where the Towers had lived in the early years of their marriage while she was their church pianist and he was a political science professor at Midwestern State University. The couple had three daughters. Lou often campaigned with Tower in his the early races. In 1977, Tower wed the former Lila Burt Cummings, from whom he was divorced in 1986 in a bitter split.
Tower died with one of his daughters, Marian, in the 1991 crash of Atlantic Southeast Airlines Flight 2311 in Brunswick, Georgia, while the two were on a promotional tour for Tower's ''Consequences: A Personal and Political Memoir'', published a few months before the crash.
He donated his papers to his alma mater, Southwestern University.<ref>{{cite web|title=John G. Tower Papers|publisher=Southwestern University|url=http://southwestern.edu/infoservices/departments/specialcollections/tower/index.php|accessdate=November 15, 2012}}</ref>
John and Lou Tower and daughter Marian are interred at Sparkman-Hillcrest Memorial Park Cemetery in Dallas. John and Lou are not buried side by side. A cenotaph in Tower's honor was erected at the Texas State Cemetery in the capital city of [[Austin]].
Tower's impact on Texas politics continues through the success of three prominent Republicans, [[John Cornyn]], who holds the old Tower seat, former state Representative Dan H. Branch of Dallas, who sits on the board of the John Goodwin Tower Center for Political Studies at [[Southern Methodist University]] and lost an intra-party challenge to [[Ken Paxton]] in 2014 for the office of Texas attorney general, and [[Joe Straus]] of San Antonio, the Texas House Speaker since 2009 who holds his position through an alliance with all of the chamber's Democratic members. Straus was once a youthful chauffeur for Senator Tower.
==References==
{{reflist}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tower, John}}
[[Category:Texas]]
[[Category:Politicians]]
[[Category:U.S. Senators]]
[[Category:Republicans]]
[[Category:Former Democrats]]
[[Category:Methodists]]
[[Category:Professors]]
[[Category:United States Navy]]
[[Category:World War II]]
[[Category:American Authors]]