MIAMI – Former U.S. Sen. George Smathers, a dashing politician who forged friendships with presidents, waged war against communism, resisted civil rights legislation and was an early voice cautioning of Fidel Castro’s rise to power, died Saturday. He was 93.
The Democrat, who served two terms in the U.S. House and three in the Senate, suffered a stroke Monday, said his son, Bruce.
Smathers was among a new breed of congressmen – along with John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon – who arrived on Capitol Hill in the late 1940s with a worldliness that few before them had brought. Shaped by World War II duty in the Marines, Smathers used his more than two decades in Washington to focus on international issues and fight the spread of communism.
In his political career, Smathers helped pass bills to create Medicare, the Small Business Administration and Everglades National Park. He pushed for federal holidays to be moved to Mondays, essentially creating the modern three-day weekend. And he ardently supported the war in Vietnam.
He is survived by his second wife, to whom he’d been married since the early 1970s; two sons; a sister; and three grandchildren.
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