Former Sen. Moynihan Has Died
The Associated Press
Wednesday, March 26, 2003; 5:34 PM
WASHINGTON - Former Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a New York City shoe shine boy who became an iconoclastic scholar-politician and served four terms in the Senate, died Wednesday. He was 76.
The New York Democrat and former U.N. ambassador had been in ill health. He was hospitalized in January for an intestinal disorder, and again soon after for a back injury. His latest setback was an infection after an emergency appendectomy on March 11 at the Washington Hospital Center.
Moynihan served in the Senate from 1977 to 2001. He was succeeded by Hillary Rodham Clinton, who announced her Senate candidacy in a torch-passing news conference at Moynihan's farm in July 1999.
She announced his death Wednesday on the Senate floor.
"We have lost a great American, an extraordinary senator, an intellectual and a man of passion and understanding for what really makes the country work," she said.
After retiring from politics, Moynihan became a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center. Fellow legislators named Manhattan's new federal courthouse in his honor. The lanky, pink-faced lawmaker, who preferred bow ties and professorial tweeds to the Senate uniform of lawyer-like pinstripes, reveled in speaking his mind and defying conventional labels.
Known for his ability to spot emerging issues and trends, Moynihan was a leader in welfare reform and transportation initiatives, and an authority on Social Security and foreign policy.
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