Barry Goldwater

Barry Goldwater served five terms in the United States Senate. Author of The Conscience of a Conservative (1960), he is widely recognized as the founder of the modern conservative movement.

• He was born on January 1, 1909, in Phoenix. He attended Phoenix public schools, graduated from Staunton Military Academy in Virginia, and studied at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
• During World War II, Goldwater served as a pilot in the U.S. Army Air Force in the Asiatic Theater from 1941 to 1945. He joined the Air Force Reserve after the war and founded the Arizona Air National Guard, which he desegregated two years earlier than the rest of the U.S. military. In 1967, he retired with the rank of major general.
• In 1949 Goldwater won a seat on the Phoenix city council, launching his career in public service. Three years later, he won his first of two consecutive terms in the United States Senate. He supported certain civil rights bills but in 1964 voted against the final version of the Civil Rights Act because he believed it intruded on the rights of states and individuals. Also in that year he won the Republican nomination for the presidency. He was defeated by incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson, but Arizonans returned him to the Senate in 1968, 1974, and 1980; he chose not to seek re-election in 1986.
• Barry Goldwater died on May 29, 1998, at the age of 89.