Chafee, John H. (039083): Difference between revisions

|class_rank=2nd Lt

|nativity=US

|religion=P

|birth_place=Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.

|death_place=Bethesda, Maryland, U.S.

|awards=Presidential Medal of Freedom

|awards_ribbons=Ribbon_Presidential_Medal_of_Freedom_ribbon.png; Ribbon_Combat_Action_Ribbon.png; Ribbon_United_States_Navy_Presidential_Unit_Citation_ribbon.png; Ribbon_American_Campaign_Medal_ribbon.png; Ribbon_Asiatic-Pacific_Campaign_Medal_ribbon.png; Ribbon_World_War_II_Victory_Medal_ribbon.png; Ribbon_National_Defense_Service_Medal_ribbon.png; Ribbon_Korean_Service_Medal_-_Ribbon.png; Ribbon_Presidential_Unit_Citation_Korea.png; Ribbon_United_Nations_Service_Medal_Korea_ribbon.png; Ribbon_Republic_of_Korea_War_Service_Medal_ribbon.png

 

Chafee was born in Providence, Rhode Island, to a politically active family. He was the son of Janet Melissa (née Hunter) and John Sharpe Chafee. His great-grandfather, Henry Lippitt, was governor of Rhode Island (1875–1877), and among his great-uncles were a Rhode Island governor, Charles Warren Lippitt, and United States Senator Henry Frederick Lippitt. His uncle, Zechariah Chafee, was a Harvard law professor, and a notable civil libertarian. His cousin was Frederick Lippitt, former Minority Leader in the Rhode Island House of Representatives. He had two daughters and four sons, one of whom is former Rhode Island Governor and former United States Senator Lincoln Chafee. One of his daughters, Tribbie, died following an accident at a horse show in October 1968 at the age of 14. His eldest child, John H. Chafee, is a UCLA alumnus.

 

John Chafee graduated from a coeducational primary school, Providence's Gordon School, in 1931 and then attended Providence Country Day School. In 1940, he graduated from Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts. Chafee was an Episcopalian.

 

Chafee was in his third year as an undergraduate at Yale University when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. He interrupted his undergraduate studies and enlisted in the Marine Corps, spending his 20th birthday fighting on the island of Guadalcanal from August 8 until November 1942, when the First Marine Division was relieved. After receiving his commission as a second lieutenant, he fought in the Battle of Okinawa in the spring of 1945.

Following the war, he received degrees from Yale University in 1947 and Harvard Law School in 1950. At Yale, he was a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon (Phi chapter) and Skull and Bones fraternities. In 1951, he was recalled to active service to be a Marine rifle company commander during the Korean War with Dog Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines.

Author James Brady, in his memoir of the Korean War and serving as a Marine under Chafee, writes that "[n]owhere, at any time, did John Chafee serve more nobly than he did as a Marine officer commanding a rifle company in the mountains of North Korea," and that "[h]e was the only truly great man I've yet met in my life..."

Chafee's military awards include three awards of the Presidential Unit Citation, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, the World War II Victory Medal, the Korean Service Medal and the United Nations Korea Medal.

Chafee became active in behind-the-scenes Rhode Island politics by helping elect a mayor of Providence in the early 1950s. He successfully ran for a seat in the Rhode Island House of Representatives in 1956 and later became the minority leader. He was re-elected in 1958 and 1960, the latter a year when many Republicans were swept from office in his state.

As governor, Chafee helped create the state's public transportation administration as well as what was known as the Green Acres program, a conservation effort. In 1968, he served as chair of the Republican Governors Association. He served as governor until 1969, when he was surprisingly defeated by underdog Democrat Frank Licht. Reasons ascribed for the defeat include the fact that, after running three times on a strong anti-income tax platform, Chafee now said that such a tax was imperative (indeed his anti-tax opponent went on to champion one in 1971); and that he stopped campaigning after his daughter was killed.

On October 24, 1999, around seven months after Chafee announced his retirement from the Senate, he died from heart failure at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, two days after his 77th birthday. President Clinton eulogized him, saying, "He embodied the decent center. For him, civility was not simply a matter of personal manners. He believed it was essential to the preservation of our democratic system." Chafee was succeeded in the Senate by his son, Lincoln, who went on to win a full term in his own right in 2000 and later served as Governor of Rhode Island.

 

The USS Chafee (DDG-90), the John H. Chafee Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor and the John H. Chafee National Wildlife Refuge were named in his honor.

 

 

 

 

* Camp Ritchie class roster (classes 1–31), merged research file