Philip Hart: Utah Beach Veteran Honored by a 99 to 0 Senate Vote

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Philip Hart was born in December 1912 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, the son of a bank president, and was student body president and an award winning debater at Georgetown before earning a University of Michigan law degree in 1937. In 1943 he married Jane Briggs, daughter of the Detroit Tigers' owner, who became Michigan's first female helicopter pilot and later passed Mercury 13 astronaut screening. Serving with the 4th Infantry Division, he was wounded by shrapnel at Utah Beach on D-Day and earned the Bronze Star, Purple Heart and Croix de Guerre, recovering at Percy Jones Army Hospital in Battle Creek alongside Bob Dole and Daniel Inouye. He then served as Michigan's securities commissioner, state director of price stabilization, and two term lieutenant governor under G. Mennen Williams.

Elected to the Senate in 1958, he was chief Senate sponsor of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which replaced the national origin quota system with a seven category preference system. His support for gun control and school busing inspired bumper stickers declaring that a recall cures Hart attacks, though the Constitution offers no recall of federal officials, and he won reelection in 1964 and 1970. He announced his retirement in June 1976, was diagnosed with melanoma a month later, and died in December 1976, about a week before his term ended. The Senate voted 99 to 0, with Hart abstaining, to name its new office building for him while he was still alive.

• He and Janey lost their son Philip Jr. as a toddler, and Hart was later buried near him on Mackinac Island.
• As price stabilization director he enforced postwar maximum price rules between angry businesses and consumers.
• He was the first Michigan Democrat to serve two terms as lieutenant governor.
• He introduced the 1961 legislation that led to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.
• The Battle Creek hospital where he recovered is now the Hart-Dole-Inouye Federal Center.