System Mechanic - Clean, repair, protect, and speed up your PC!John Gardner
d. 2002
SAN FRANCISCO (Sun February 17, 2002) - John W. Gardner, who helped launch Medicare, founded Common Cause and became known as ``the father of campaign finance reform,' has died. He was 89.
Gardner died Saturday at his home on the Stanford University campus, his daughter, Francesca Gardner, told The Associated Press.
``He was a good American father,' she said. ``He was honest, straightforward, earnest, funny, but he knew how to get a laugh in a speech.'
The trailblazing advocate of democratic participation and volunteerism also led the Carnegie Corp. and kept engaged in the nation's intellectual life until he was bedridden in January from complications of prostate cancer.
Gardner went to Stanford to teach in 1989 after decades of public service, which by 1964 earned him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
``His life should remind all of us that education and public service can work together as a powerful force to improve the world in which we live,' Stanford University President John Hennessey said Sunday.
Gardner introduced Common Cause in 1970.
``We are going to build a true 'citizens' lobby _ a lobby concerned not with the advancement of special interests but with the well-being of the nation,' he said.
As its membership swelled to hundreds of thousands, the nonpartisan Common Cause wielded tremendous political clout, helping reform the nation's campaign finance laws to limit money politicians could make from politics.
``When Americans attend open meetings or read their government's documents, or take part in our battered but resilient public finance system for presidential elections, there is a memorial to John Gardner,' Common Cause President Scott Harshbarger said. ``When we turn on public television, or when government ensures no senior or poor person goes without health care, we take part in programs John Gardner initiated.'
Gardner brought to Common Cause a keen understanding of the ways of Washington influence and power and a belief in the nation's model of government.
``He loved American democracy, the possibilities of it,' Francesca Gardner said.
Gardner was secretary of health, education and welfare at the height of President Johnson's Great Society, the only Republican in the Cabinet. He held the post from Medicare's first year in 1965 until he resigned in 1968.
Earlier, he had been a frequent government adviser, even though he was busy as president of the Carnegie Corp. beginning in 1955.
He also was a prolific author of books on leadership and self renewal, and edited ``To Turn the Tide,' a collection of John F. Kennedy's speeches.
Gardner is survived by his wife, Aida, a brother, two daughters, and two granddaughters.
