Dave Durenberger, who served 16 years in the U.S. Senate as a moderate Republican and championed affordable health care, the Boundary Waters and the Americans with Disabilities Act, died Tuesday. He was 88.
His son Dave Durenberger Jr. said his father declined in the past two weeks and died at his St. Paul home. "That's what was so wonderful about all of this; it was a two-week process and family was able to come and be with him and tell stories," his son said.
Born in St. Cloud in 1934, Durenberger grew up on the campus of St. John's University in Collegeville, where his father, George Durenberger, was the athletic director and his mother, Isabelle, was a longtime administrative assistant who helped found the alumni organization.
Ambitious, and with hopes of becoming governor, Durenberger was the top cadet in his ROTC class at St. John's, a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps and a captain in the U.S. Army Reserve. He earned his law degree in 1959 from the University of Minnesota.
He was drawn to politics early, working for former Govs. Harold LeVander and Elmer L. Andersen. In the late 1970s, he launched his own gubernatorial bid, but when DFL Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey died in January 1978, Durenberger ran for Humphrey's Senate seat with a campaign theme of "Minnesota's Next Great Senator."
He won and held the seat until 1995 when he didn't seek re-election after a scandal over his congressional expense account. He remains the only Republican from Minnesota to be elected to three terms in the U.S. Senate. His longtime chief of staff Tom Horner said Durenberger's guiding concern was, "How do I have government that is efficient, effective and as close to the people as possible?"
Durenberger's fingerprints were on many sweeping pieces of legislation affecting health care, the environment and people with disabilities, and he continued his work after leaving office as the chair of the National Institute of Health Policy and a senior health policy fellow at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul.
"Today our country lost a patriotic American, Minnesota lost a skilled statesman, and Saint John's lost a great Johnnie," St. John's President Brian Bruess said in a statement.