Former Texas Governor Price Daniel Sr.

Former Democratic Gov. Price Daniel Sr., who served Texas for more than 40 years in all three branches of state government and once said he would rather be governor of Texas than President of the United States, died early Thursday.

He was 77 and died after suffering what appeared to be a massive stroke.

George Christian, a former press secretary to President Lyndon B. Johnson and to Daniel, said the former governor died at Kirsting Memorial Hospital in Liberty.

Christian said Daniel’s wife, Jean, told him the former governor apparently became ill after putting his 4-year-old grandson to bed Wednesday night. He said Daniel had had two smaller strokes recently.

Daniel had continued to practice law and recently worked out a settlement for the Alabama-Coushatta Indians in a dispute concerning oil royalties, Christian said.

Daniel first was elected to office as a state representative when he 29 years old. He became Speaker of the Texas House at 32, state attorney general at 36, U.S. senator at 42 and three-term governor at 46. He was appointed to the Texas Supreme Court when he was 61.

Elected Governor in ’56

A Democrat who supported President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Daniel resigned from the Senate to run for governor in 1956. He was elected, succeeding Gov. Allan Shivers, and reelected in 1958 and 1960. But in 1962, seeking an unprecedented fourth term, he finished third in a three-man Democratic primary race behind John Connally and Don Yarborough.

Daniel once described his four decades in office as his responsibility. He said he tried to follow the examples of some of the state’s great men--Sam Houston and Jim Hogg--but never put himself in their class.