Albert Gore Sr., Vice President’s Father, Dies at 90

Vice President Al Gore’s father, Albert Gore Sr., who served in Congress for three decades and was a leading opponent of the Vietnam War and a key force behind the interstate highway system, died Saturday. He was 90.

Gore died of natural causes at his home, a statement from the vice president’s office said. The vice president and his wife, Tipper, were at his bedside.

A leader among Democrats, Gore served in the Senate from 1953 to 1970. Gore was a key opponent of the Vietnam War as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. His son, however, enlisted in the Army after his graduation from Harvard and spent two years in Vietnam as an Army journalist.

An unabashed liberal who made few concessions to the will of Tennessee voters, Gore voted against two of President Nixon’s Southern Supreme Court nominees: Clement F. Haynsworth Jr. and G. Harrold Carswell. His votes earned him then-Vice President Spiro T. Agnew’s famous epithet, “Southern regional chairman of the Eastern Liberal Establishment.”

His opposition to the war and his liberal positions were blamed for his defeat in 1970 by Republican Bill Brock, scion of a wealthy candy-making family. Gore retired from public life after his defeat.

Six years later, his son was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, then to the Senate in 1984. After a failed presidential try in 1988, the younger Gore was elected vice president as Bill Clinton’s running mate in 1992.

President Clinton paid tribute Saturday night to the senior Gore, calling him a valuable public servant “who helped connect the South with the rest of America.”

Gore himself had briefly been a vice presidential candidate to Adlai E. Stevenson III during the 1956 Democratic national convention. He withdrew in favor of fellow Tennessee Sen. Estes Kefauver, who won the nomination. The Democratic ticket lost to the Republican incumbent Dwight D. Eisenhower.

When Gore was first elected to the Senate, in 1952, he had already served 14 years in the U.S. House, taking time out for Army service during World War II.

In the 1950s, the elder Gore introduced legislation to create the interstate highway system, promoting it as a national defense network modeled on the German autobahn that he had seen during World War II service. The bill was passed in 1956.

“The multiplication of automobiles and trucks made our narrow, free-access highways completely out of date,” Gore said. The interstate system now totals 44,000 miles.

After his defeat in the Senate, the onetime schoolteacher-farmer was named to the board of Island Creek Coal Co., a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum Corp., by Armand Hammer. Gore’s farm at Carthage also contains extensive copper, zinc and germanium ore.

The former senator’s life was not always comfortable. Born Dec. 26, 1907, in the mountain community of Granville, Gore moved with his family to the Carthage area when he was 2.

He received his early education in the one-room Possum Hollow school and later became a teacher in one-room schools himself. That gave him the money to put himself through Middle Tennessee State College, from where he graduated in 1932.

His first elective office was Smith County school superintendent. While serving in that job, he studied law at Nashville’s YMCA Law School and operated a tobacco-grading barn.

Gore and his wife, Pauline LaFon Gore, were married in 1937. Besides their son, the vice president, they also had a daughter, Nancy, who died of lung cancer at age 45 in 1984.

Funeral arrangements are pending.