News

By Ron Hayes
In the fall of 1936, two country boys arrived in Columbus, Ohio, to begin their freshman year at the state university.
Robert Neff was from Canfield; William Saxbe from Mechanicsburg.
They became friends, fraternity brothers and, seven decades later, winter neighbors in coastal Palm Beach County.
Bob Neff is 94 now, and lives full-time in Delray Beach.
Bill Saxbe was also 94 on Aug. 26, when he died in Mechanicsburg at the end of a long, accomplished and sometimes-controversial life. He had spent his winters in Delray Beach and Gulf Stream and was a member of The St. Andrew’s Club, The Little Club and the Country Club of Florida.
After college and law school, Saxbe went on to become a four-term Republican state representative in Ohio, a speaker of the state House; state attorney general; a U.S. senator, U.S. attorney general during the infamous Watergate scandal that brought down the president who appointed him, and U.S. ambassador to India.
Through it all, he remained a plainspoken country boy who said what he thought.
“He was one of the funniest and most honest and down-to-earth politicians we ever had,” says Neff, his friend of 74 years. “You felt like he was one of us. Ever since the days at Ohio State, he was one of the people.”
Saxbe was a one-term U.S. senator in 1974 when President Richard M. Nixon chose him to become the faltering administration’s fourth attorney general. The first two had been accused of crimes, and the third, Elliot Richardson, had resigned to protest Nixon’s handling of the crisis.
Within months, however, Saxbe had concluded that his president was a liar.
“He had lied to me … and he tried to involve me in his lies,” Saxbe wrote in his 2000 autobiography, I’ve Seen The Elephant. “I never can forgive him for that.”
Saxbe, who declined to attend Nixon’s funeral, had already riled the Nixon White House before he became attorney general.
In 1971, he described Nixon’s top aides, H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, as “a couple of Nazis.”
And in 1972, when the administration resumed the bombing of North Vietnam, Saxbe said: “I have followed President Nixon through all his convulsions and specious arguments, but he appears to have lost his senses on this.”
Occasionally, Saxbe’s candor got him in trouble.
As U.S. attorney general, he was clearly wrong when the so-called “Symbionese Liberation Army” and kidnapped heiress Patty Hearst were photographed robbing a bank.
The SLA, Saxbe commented, were “common criminals … and Miss Hearst is a part of it.”
In fact, Hearst had not been charged with any crime, and a U.S. attorney general had no business commenting on her guilt or innocence before a trial.
“He said what he wanted to say,” Neff recalled. “He was outspoken, but on the whole he was well-received.”
In keeping with his maverick status, Saxbe was a conservative who occasionally surprised observers by taking a liberal stance. In Ohio, he was a strong proponent of capital punishment, but as a U.S. senator, he was equally outspoken in opposing the development of antiballistic missiles.
“He could have been president if he’d wanted to be,” Neff reflected. “I’m sure he just didn’t want to go out and solicit money and peddle for donors. He was a very independent sort of guy that way.”
Mr. Saxbe is survived by Ardath “Dolly” Saxbe, his wife of 68 years; two sons, Rocky Saxbe of Columbus and William B. Saxbe Jr. of Williamstown, Mass; a daughter, Juli Spitzer of Jackson Hole, Wyo.; nine grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
A private service and burial were held in Mechanicsburg.