Christopher Bond, former Governor of Missouri and the US Senator, dies on 86

Christopher S. Bond, who was the youngest governor of Missouri and the first Republican governor of the State since 1945 when he was elected in 1972, and who subsequently served four times in the US Senate, died in St. Louis on Tuesday. He was 86.

His death was announced by Gov. Mike Kehoe, a fellow republican. The announcement did not say where he died in St. Louis.

Mr. Bond, known as Kit, was 31 in 1970 when he was elected as state auditor and defeated a 17-year-old sitting. He served from 1971 to 1973, when he became governor, after being elected in November 1972 at the age of 33. He was the first Republican to hold that position since Forrest C. Donnell left the office in 1945.

Mr. Bond was defeated for re -election, but in 1980 he organized a comeback by Joseph P. Teasdale, the Democrat who had replaced him. He succeeded Thomas F. EagletonA Democrat, in the Senate in 1987 after Mr. Eagleton retired.

His election up to a fourth term in 2004 was the seventh time that Mr Bond won the office throughout the state – more than any other candidate in the history of Missouri.

In 2009 he announced that he would not look for a fifth term in 2010.

“In 1973 I became the youngest governor of Missouri,” said Mr. Bond, then 69, then. “I don’t strive to become Missouri’s oldest senator.”

Shortly after the Lord Bond retired from the Senate, John D. Ashcroft said a Republican in Missouri who served with the Lord Bond in the Senate before he became the American attorney general,

Christopher Samuel Bond, born on March 6, 1939 in St. Louis, was a sixth generation Missourian. His father, Arthur, had been the captain of the football team of the University of Missouri Tigers of 1924 and a Rhodes scholar who led the export division of the fire brigade factory of his cleaning. His mother was Elizabeth (Green) Bond.

Kit was raised in Mexico, Mo., about 120 miles northwest of St. Louis. As a child he lost vision in one eye of Amblyopia or Lazy Eye, a condition that influences the nerves that connect the retina and the brain.

He graduated in 1956 from the Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts; van Princeton, with a Bachelor’s degree of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs, in 1960; And from the University of Virginia School of Law with a Juris Doctor Degree in 1963.

He served for Elbert Tuttle, a judge of the American Court of Appeal in Georgia; Practiced rights in Covington & Burling in Washington; And ran without success in 1968 for the congress from a national house district in the northeastern part of Missouri. He was hired by John Danforth, the Attorney General, as an assistant processor -general in 1969 and promoted to lead to the Consumer Protection department of the office a year later. He was 31.

After leaving the public office, Mr. Bond practiced law and served as a consultant for business strategy.

He and his wife, Carolyn, divorced in 1994. His survivors are his son from that marriage, Sam; his second wife, Linda (Pell) Bond, a Republican fundraiser; And two grandchildren.

The file of Mr. Bond as governor and in the Senate was generally considered moderately, although he leaned on the rights of the issues of the economy and national security.

As the Republican ranking in the Senate Select Committee for Intelligence, he supported the Iraq war and domestic security of security of President George W. Bush.

He was one of the few nine senators who opposed a bill to insist that interrogators of Central Intelligence Agency are complying with army standards. He said he opposed torture, but he once compared waterboarding with swimming.

Mr. Bond supported the amendment of equal rights but opposed same -sex marriage. He preferred free trade, offshore drilling and a ban on gifts from lobbyists to members of the congress. He was also a sponsor of the Family and Medical Leave Act From 1993, for which employers had to be with 50 or more employees to offer unpaid leave for medical emergencies in the family, delivery or adoption.

In 1976, as a governor, he withdrew a Fiat published by Gov. Lilburn Boggs in 1838 that ordered the removal or extermination of all Mormons from the State.

In 2010, after curators in the Missouri State Museum discovered that what they thought was a moon Rock actually a sample of moon fabric, Mr. Bond revealed that he unintentionally took the actual Apollo 17 -moon sample, worth around $ 5 million, when he left as a Governor. He gave it back.

In 1998, when the Internal Revenue Service stated that a fan who hit a record-breaking home run by the first Honkman Mark McGwire from St. Louis Cardinals-a ball who would be worth around $ 140,000 could be worthy of paying for paying gift tax, the Lord Bond stated: “If the Irs wants the irsie will:” The Irs Lord will want the irsian will to want the Irs Are in America, she doesn’t have to look for this one. “