Former Secretary of State George Shultz, an influential foreign policy figure during President Ronald Reagan’s administration, died on Saturday, on Reagan’s birthday, at the age of 100 at his home in Stanford, California, the Hoover Institution said on Sunday.
Shultz, a distinguished member of the Hoover Institution, held three important ministerial positions in Republican administrations during his long career in public service. Before spending more than six years as Reagan’s secretary of state, he served as secretary of labor, secretary of the treasury and director of President Richard Nixon’s Office of Management and Budget. His management experience also included a stint as senior economist on the staff of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Council of Economic Advisers.
As the country’s top diplomat in the 1980s, Shultz paved the way for peace in the Middle East and tried to strengthen Cold War relations with the Soviet Union.
On this July 13, 1982, designated Secretary of State George Shultz, on the right, speaks to members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee before the afternoon session of the panel at the Capitol in Washington. From the left. Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del .; Sen. Charles Percy, R-Ill., Chairman of the panel and Sen. Edward Zorinsky, D-Neb.
(AP Photo / Ira Schwarz, Archive)
Shultz negotiated the first treaty to decrease the size of the Soviet Union’s ground-based nuclear arsenals. The 1987 agreement was a historic attempt to start reversing the nuclear arms race.
In 1989, Shultz received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s largest civilian tribute.
He was the oldest ex-Cabinet member of any administration.
The war veteran was born on December 13, 1920 in New York City and raised in New Jersey. He studied economics and public and international relations at Princeton University and graduated in 1942.
He then joined the Marine Corps and rose to the rank of captain as an artillery officer during World War II.
In 1949, he obtained a Ph.D. in economics at MIT. He taught at MIT and the University of Chicago, where he was dean of the business school.
Shultz was most recently professor emeritus at Stanford Graduate School of Business.
He was married to Helena “Obie” O’Brien, an Army nurse he met during World War II, and they had five children together. Two years after his death in 1997, he married Charlotte Maillard, head of the San Francisco protocol.
Shultz leaves Maillard, his five children, 11 grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.
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The cause of death was not provided by the Hoover Institution.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.