Governor Tom Corbett has ordered all Pennsylvania flags lowered to half-staff in honor of former Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton who died Sunday night at the age of 96.
Scranton passed away at a residence at a retirement community in California. Death was attributed to a brain hemorrhage. Scranton also owned a home in Waverly, just outside the Pennsylvania city which bears his family’s name.
State legislators and political pundits are remembering Scranton as a leader and statesman. Franklin and Marshall College professor Terry Madonna, a renowned political analyst and pollster, told Radio PA News the former Governor was a moderate Republican, elected just after the Democrats had earned their first voter registration advantage in state history.
Scranton was a one-term governor, serving from 1963 until 1967. He was responsible for creating the state Board of Education and the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (PHEAA).
Scranton was also a 1964 Presidential candidate, and served for nearly a year in the mid-1970’s as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations. He also chaired the Presidential panel which probed the 1970 shootings on the campuses of Kent State and Jackson State Universities.