Bob Dole - Wikipedia

Robert Joseph Dole (born July 22, 1923) is a retired American politician, statesman,[3] and attorney who represented Kansas in the U.S House of Representatives from 1961 to 1969 and in the U.S. Senate from 1969 to 1996, serving as the Republican Leader of the United States Senate from 1985 until 1996. He was the Republican presidential nominee in the 1996 presidential election and the party's vice presidential nominee in the 1976 presidential election.

Born in Russell, Kansas, Dole established a legal career in Russell after serving with distinction in the United States Army during World War II. After a stint as Russell County Attorney, he won election to the House of Representatives in 1960. In 1968, Dole was elected to the Senate, where he served as Chairman of the Republican National Committee from 1971 to 1973 and Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee from 1981 to 1985. He led the Senate Republicans from 1985 to his resignation in 1996, and served as Senate Majority Leader from 1985 to 1987 and from 1995 to 1996. In his role as Republican leader, he helped defeat President Bill Clinton's health care plan.

President Gerald Ford chose Dole as his running mate in the 1976 election after Vice President Nelson Rockefeller withdrew from seeking a full term. Ford was defeated by Democrat Jimmy Carter in the general election. Dole sought the Republican presidential nomination in 1980 but quickly dropped out of the race. He experienced more success in the 1988 Republican primaries but was defeated by Vice President George H. W. Bush. Dole won the Republican nomination in 1996 and selected Jack Kemp as his running mate. The Republican ticket lost in the general election to Bill Clinton, making Dole the first person to be nominated for both president and vice president by one of the current major parties without winning election to either position. He resigned from the Senate during the 1996 campaign and did not seek public office again after the election.

Though he retired from public office, Dole has remained active in public life after 1996. He appeared in numerous commercials and television programs and served on various councils. In 2012, Dole unsuccessfully advocated Senate ratification of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. He initially supported Jeb Bush in the 2016 Republican primaries, but later became the only former Republican nominee to endorse Donald Trump, after Trump clinched the Republican nomination. Dole is currently a member of the advisory council of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and special counsel at the Washington, D.C., office of law firm Alston & Bird.[4] On January 17, 2018, Dole was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. He is married to former U.S. Senator Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina.

In 2019, the U.S. Congress unanimously passed a bill promoting the 95-year-old Dole from Captain to Colonel for his service during World War II.[1][2]

In 1942, Dole joined the United States Army's Enlisted Reserve Corps to fight in World War II, becoming a second lieutenant in the Army's 10th Mountain Division. In April 1945, while engaged in combat near Castel d'Aiano in the Apennine mountains southwest of Bologna, Italy, Dole was seriously wounded by German machine gun fire, being struck in his upper back and right arm. As Lee Sandlin describes, when fellow soldiers saw the extent of his injuries, all they thought they could do was to "give him the largest dose of morphine they dared and write an 'M' for 'morphine' on his forehead in his own blood, so that nobody else who found him would give him a second, fatal dose."[13]

Dole was transported to the United States, where his recovery was slow, interrupted by blood clots and a life-threatening infection. After large doses of penicillin were not successful, he overcame the infection with the administration of streptomycin, which at the time was still an experimental drug.[14] He remained despondent, "not ready to accept the fact that my life would be changed forever." He was encouraged to see Hampar Kelikian, an orthopedist in Chicago who had been working with veterans returning from war. Although during their first meeting Kelikian told Dole that he would never be able to recover fully, the encounter changed Dole's outlook on life, who years later wrote of Kelikian, a survivor of the Armenian Genocide, "Kelikian inspired me to focus on what I had left and what I could do with it, rather than complaining what had been lost." Dr. K, as Dole later came to affectionately call him, operated on him seven times, free of charge, and had, in Dole's words, "an impact on my life second only to my family."[15]

Dole recovered from his wounds at the Percy Jones Army Hospital. This complex of federal buildings, no longer a hospital, is now named Hart-Dole-Inouye Federal Center in honor of three patients who became United States Senators: Dole, Philip Hart and Daniel Inouye. Dole was decorated three times, receiving two Purple Hearts for his injuries, and the Bronze Star with "V" Device for valor for his attempt to assist a downed radioman. The injuries left him with limited mobility in his right arm and numbness in his left arm. He minimizes the effect in public by keeping a pen in his right hand.[16]