Also Served as Ambassador to Pakistan : Horace Hildreth; Ex-Governor of Maine

Former Gov. Horace A. Hildreth, who also served as U.S. ambassador to Pakistan and president of Bucknell University, has died. He was 85.

Hildreth suffered a fatal heart attack Thursday at Maine Medical Center, where he was being examined for a blood-pressure problem, said his son, Horace Jr.

In Augusta, Gov. John R. McKernan issued a statement saying he was “deeply saddened” by the death of his fellow Republican, who served as governor from 1945 to 1949.

“The state has lost a great friend, public servant and true patron,” McKernan said. “He will be sorely missed.”

Hildreth, a lawyer, was also a broadcasting executive. He served as president of Bucknell from 1949 to 1953 after leading Maine through conversion to a peacetime economy after World War II.

In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower named Hildreth ambassador to Pakistan.

Lost Bid for Senate

Hildreth’s two terms as governor included one of the state’s worst economic disasters, a 1947 forest fire that blackened more than 200,000 acres, killed 16 people and destroyed almost 1,100 homes.

In 1948, Hildreth tried to win a U.S. Senate seat, but ran second to Sen. Margaret Chase Smith in a four-way GOP primary contest. Ten years later, he failed in a bid for a third term as governor.

A Gardiner native, Hildreth was a graduate of Bowdoin College and Harvard Law School. He practiced law in Portland and began the Hildreth Network of Maine radio stations before going into politics in 1940 as a state lawmaker.

The Hildreth Network included the state’s first commercial radio station, Bangor’s WABI. Other stations were WABI-TV in Bangor and WAGM-TV in Presque Isle.

In 1977, he and W. Russell Brace of Belfast combined the broadcasting network with Brace’s newspaper and book publishing interests in a company known as Diversified Communications Inc.

Hildreth is survived by his wife, the former Katherine Wing, and four children.