On July 31, 1953, Robert Alphonso Taft, U.S. Senator from Ohio and elder son of President William Howard Taft, died of cancer in New York.

Born in Cincinnati in 1889, Taft graduated first in his class at Yale and at Harvard Law School.

He practiced law in Cincinnati and served in the Ohio House and Senate, and was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1938.

Known as "Mr. Republican," he was father of the Taft-Hartley Act. But his lifelong ambition was to be president. He ran for the Republican nomination in 1940, 1948 and 1952.

In 1953, doctors discovered a malignant tumor and told him his case was hopeless. Taft concealed his prognosis even from his wife, Martha. She visited him in New York, but he sent her back to Washington. He slipped into a coma and died three days later.

Rebecca Goodman

E-mail rgoodman@enquirer.com or call (513) 768-8361