Howard Baker

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American lawyer and politician who served as a Republican Senator from Tennessee in 1966, winning re-election twice, in 1972 and 1978, by overwhelming margins. He was Senate Minority Leader in 1977 and member of the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Activities, Foreign Relations Committee and Public Works Committee, being re-elected to the office in 1979 by a unanimous vote of Senate Republicans. Baker served in the U.S. Navy during WW II as a Lieutenant (jg) on a PT boat in the South Pacific; he was discharged in 1946. He received his law degree from the University of Tennessee, where he was student body president in 1949. After law school, he joined a firm. A hard working and shrewd businessman, he bought into a bank and a land-tract. From the time of his first political involvement in 1966, he won national recognition in 1973 and vice-chair of the Senate Watergate Committee, and he was keynote speaker at the Republican National Convention in 1976.. On 2/27/1987, he was named White House Chief of Staff to President Reagan. He went into the hospital on 9/16/1987 for treatment of diverticulitis. On 12/22/1951, he married Joy Dirksen, the daughter of Everett Dirksen, Republican Leader of the U.S. Senate from 1959 to 1969.. The relationship produced two kids, Darek and Cissy. He was widowed when his wife died of cancer in 1993. Baker had been acquainted for some years with a popular retired Senator from Kansas, Nancy Landon Kassebaum (born 1932). When seated together at a dinner in the winter of 1995, they hit it off and began dating. They were married happily on 12/07/1996, Washington, DC. Link to Wikipedia biography