Lee Hamilton, a former longtime member of Indiana’s congressional delegation and a champion of bipartisanship, died on Feb. 3 at the age of 94.
Hamilton served for 34 years as a Democratic member of the U.S. House, forging deep friendships across the aisle with Republicans including the late Indiana U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar. The IU Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies was named after them in 2018.
Gov. Mike Braun ordered flags to be flown at half staff to commemorate his life, saying in a statement that “we extend our prayers to his family and honor his legacy of serving Hoosiers.”
“Indiana mourns the passing of Lee Hamilton, a man whose life embodied integrity, civility, and public service,” Braun said.
Earlier in the day, IU President Pam Whitten confirmed the news of his death in a statement. His daughter, Deborah Kremer, also confirmed the news of his death to The New York Times, which reported he died Feb. 3 at his home in Bloomington.
“His lifelong commitment to public service reflects the very best of our democratic ideals and left an enduring impact on our nation,” Whitten said. “We extend our deepest condolences to his family and loved ones and remain profoundly grateful for his service to Indiana University and the country.”
Hamilton joined the U.S. House in 1965 and served until 1999, becoming a widely known figure while investigating the Iran-Contra affair. After his retirement from Congress, he went into academia, working as a professor and distinguished scholar at Indiana University, serving as an expert on representative democracy, foreign policy and national security, according to the university.
“You have the sense in the Congress, whether or not it’s accurate, that you’re in the center of things, big things,” Hamilton previously said of his long career in Congress as part of an oral history. “And you have a sense that you are making a contribution towards the direction and the success of your country, I believe, even though you may not be.”
He earned the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015 from former President Barack Obama in a group alongside Barbra Streisand and Steven Spielberg. He was vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission, something he later said was one of his proudest accomplishments.
“Representative democracy gives us a system where all of us have a voice in the process and a stake in the product,” Obama said at the ceremony. He said Hamilton was a “faithful servant to that ideal, representing his district, his beloved Indiana, and his country with integrity and honor.”
Bipartisan reactions quickly poured in to honor Hamilton, with Republican U.S. Sen. Todd Young saying Indiana “lost a giant” and Democrat U.S. Rep. André Carson calling Hamilton a “champion of bipartisanship and a true Hoosier icon.”
Hamilton was married for nearly six decades to Nancy Ann Hamilton until she passed away in 2012. They had three children: Kremer, Tracy Souza and Douglas Hamilton, along with five grandchildren and a great-grandchild.
While his political career was storied, he also was a college basketball star, attending DePauw University before the Indiana University School of Law. Hamilton is in the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame. He grew up in Evansville and helped lead the Evansville Central Bears to the state championship game. He was a leading scorer and rebounder at DePauw, ultimately scoring 557 career points.
Basketball occupied most of his focus in high school and college, he previously told an IU biographer. His interest in foreign and public affairs didn’t begin until he spent a year studying abroad in Germany, where he toured Western Europe.
“I was there in Frankfurt right after the war, just a few years after the war— World War two, and it was the beginning of the German economic miracle,” he said. “I took quite an interest in German resurgence, and decided there that I would go to law school, although I had no real connection with the law at all… I went in as kind of a wide open—new challenge to me, new world.”
He didn’t come from a partisan family and said he didn’t know how his mom or dad voted, suspecting neither of them “voted what you would call a straight-line ticket.” He became a Democrat eventually, after becoming good friends with Birch Bayh, and was motivated by former President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963.
“I came along at an interesting time,” he later said. “I didn’t realize it in 1964, but 1964 was probably the strongest Democratic year in that century. … I’ve often said that any fool on the Democratic ticket could get elected in 1964, and several did. So that was all luck. … But the early days of my career, we had this flood of legislation coming along, which had backed up during the Kennedy assassination period in the early part of the Johnson administration. And those of us on the Democratic side at least thought there was a mandate.”
One of his most momentous moves in Congress came during the Vietnam War. He had been an early supporter of the war, but after taking two trips to Vietnam, he “began to have doubts about it,” he said in the oral history. He unsuccessfully offered an amendment to reduce troops in Vietnam.
“We lost the vote, but we got a lot more votes than people thought we would get, and it was kind of the beginning of Congress rebelling against the Vietnam policy,” he said.
The vote put him at odds with then-President Lyndon Johnson, who Hamilton said personally criticized him, saying “How could you do this to me?” The moment was “agonizing” to Hamilton, he recalled, but he didn’t apologize for the vote.
Hamilton’s commitment to forming relationships with fellow Americans of differing views lasted until his death, penning a blog post on Jan. 27 titled “Congress Needs More Friendships,” where he argued that the job of re-establishing Congress’s ability to assert itself will be a “lost cause” unless its members can build relationships that transcend party.
“Personal relationships undergird trust, and in Congress, trust matters,” Hamilton wrote in the post. “Without it, members default to messaging, a winner-take-all mentality, and leadership-written deals that leave no room for rank-and-file members’ input. With trust, members can bargain in smaller coalitions—and, with hard work, engage in durable policy-making. They can also do the unglamorous but necessary work that Congress needs: engage together in the expertise-building and cross-fertilization that boost how well committees function, which in turn helps restore power to the broad base of regular members.”
This story may be updated.
Contact senior government accountability reporter Hayleigh Colombo at hcolombo@indystar.com or follow her on X @hayleighcolombo.
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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Lee Hamilton, former congressman from Indiana, dies at age 94
Reporting by Hayleigh Colombo, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
