Harold Stassen

Former governor of Minnesota, educator, and special presidential assistant who won an early reputation as a ''boy wonder'' of politics only to be remembered as the man who unsuccessfully sought the Republican Party's presidential nomination nine times. Harold Edward Stassen was born April 13, 1907, in West St. Paul, Minn., to William Andrew Stassen, a farmer, and the former Elsie Emma Mueller. He completed high school at 15 and had to wait a year to enter the University of Minnesota. After graduating from the University of Minnesota's law school in 1929, Mr. Stassen and a classmate opened law offices in South St. Paul and did so well that they soon hired five other lawyers. In 1937 Mr. Stassen, who with his Young Republicans had been trying to wrest power from the state's old-guard Republicans, announced for governor. He was elected the next year, the youngest governor in Minnesota's history. He was re-elected in 1940 and again in 1942, though he told the voters he would not finish his term because he intended to join the Navy. In 1945, Mr. Stassen, as a delegate to the San Francisco conference that led to the formation of the United Nations. In 1953 the newly inaugurated President Eisenhower put Mr. Stassen in charge of American foreign aid programs. In 1955 Mr. Eisenhower named him special assistant to the president for disarmament matters, with cabinet rank. He remained in that job until 1958. From 1958 onward, while practicing law in Philadelphia, Mr. Stassen became transformed into a standard political joke as he ran unsuccessfully for public office time after time. Besides his campaigns for the presidential nomination, he lost races for the Pennsylvania Republican nomination for governor in 1958 and 1966 and for mayor of Philadelphia in 1959. He was married in 1929 to his childhood sweetheart, the former Esther Glewwe, who died in October 2000. The Stassens are survived by their two children, Glen Harold Stassen of Pasadena, Calif., a professor of Christian ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary, and Kathleen Esther Berger of Manhattan, the head of the social sciences department at Bronx Community College; seven grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.