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Senate Years of Service: 1959-1980 Party: Democrat
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MUSKIE, Edmund Sixtus, a Senator from Maine; born in Rumford, Oxford County, Maine, March
28, 1914; attended the public schools; graduated from Bates College, Lewiston,
Maine, in 1936, and Cornell University Law School, Ithaca, N.Y., in 1939;
admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1939 and Maine bar in 1940; commenced the
practice of law in Waterville, Maine, in 1940; during the Second World War
enlisted in the United States Navy and served in the Atlantic and
Asiatic-Pacific Theaters 1942-1945; member and secretary of Waterville Board of
Zoning Adjustment 1948-1955; appointed district director for Maine Office of
Price Stabilization 1951-1952; city solicitor of Waterville in 1954; elected to
the State house of representatives in 1946, 1948, and 1950, and was Democratic
floor leader 1949-1951; Governor of Maine 1955-1959; elected a Democrat to the
United States Senate in 1958; reelected in 1964, 1970 and 1976 and served from
January 3, 1959, until his resignation on May 7, 1980, to enter the Cabinet;
chairman, Committee on the Budget (Ninety-third through Ninety-sixth
Congresses); unsuccessful Democratic candidate for Vice President of the United
States in 1968; Secretary of State in the Cabinet of President Jimmy Carter
1980-1981; awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on January 16, 1981;
member, Presidents Special Review Board (Tower Commission) 1987; practiced
law and was a resident of Washington, D.C., until his death on March 26, 1996;
interment at Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Va.
BibliographyScribner Encyclopedia of American Lives; Asbell,
Bernard.
The Senate Nobody Knows. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1978;
Muskie, Edmund.
Journeys. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972.
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