Bob Dole, the war hero who went on to become the Republican leader in the Senate and his party’s nominee for president of the United States, died at the age of 98, his family said Sunday.
Mr. Dole, who in February announced he was battling Stage 4 lung cancer, had been ailing for some time, but his longevity and accomplished career were near miracles given the grievous wounds he suffered on a northern Italian hillside in April 1945.
His history as a veteran defined his later years, as Mr. Dole became a spokesman and figurehead of ̈the greatest generation,̈ and, despite his health, greeting untold hundreds of veterans at the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C.
“I think more than anything he just wanted to make them feel special,” said Tim Holbert, the executive director of the American Veterans Center. “That will be my lasting memory of Bob Dole — him sitting there on a Saturday, not with the cameras or the media around, just him out there on a Saturday in Washington — greeting veterans, every one, as they came off the buses.”
The Honor Flight Network, which arranges and finances trips for veterans of all wars to come to the capital, had a long partnership with Mr. Dole and said his presence and image will be impossible to replicate.
“We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him,” said Honor Flight President David Nichols. “There were a lot of people involved in getting things like Honor Flight, and even the monument itself wouldn’t exist without his dedication, he was the point man.”
Mr. Dole would famously shrug off Honor Flight officials and medical advisers who urged him to cut short his hours greeting veterans, insisting he remain until the last busload that day had arrived.
“He ́d joke with the Navy guys, tell them, ‘ah, you guys had it made, and they loved him,” Mr. Nichols said. “Bob Dole would be out there all day and every day if he could, regardless of the weather or what anybody tried to tell him.”
The National World War II Museum in New Orleans also said its founding would have been unlikely without the strong support of Mr. Dole and his fellow veterans in the Senate — Daniel Inouye, Hawaii Democrat, and Ted Stevens, Alaska Republican.
In 2005, the museum gave Mr. Dole its highest honor, the American Spirit Award, and the museum gave its Silver Service Medallion to Mr. Dole in absentia at its 2013 Victory Ball.
“Bob Dole exemplified the American Spirit,¨ said Gordon H. “Nick” Mueller, the National WWII Museum president and emeritus CEO. “He understood the need for a national museum that would preserve the memory of the veterans who fought and died for freedom in World War II and stood against the fascist regimes that threatened democracy at home and abroad.”
Prior to finding himself advancing toward Germany near the end of World War II, Mr. Dole had been a lifelong Jayhawker, recruited to Kansas University by the legendary basketball coach Phog Allen.
Although, after the war, Mr. Dole wound up earning undergraduate and law degrees at Washburn University, the Dole Institute of Politics is on the Kansas campus.
While in Lawrence, Mr. Dole played multiple sports before enlisting in the Army in 1942 and eventually being assigned to the 10th Mountain Division. He was among the units advancing up the Italian spine against heavy resistance while the Allies closed on Nazi Germany.
In April 1945, one month from the war’s end, Mr. Dole‘s unit was in Castel d’Aiano southwest of Bologna. Moving across a field raked by German machine gun fire, Mr. Dole pulled a radioman into a foxhole and, seconds later, felt bullets rip into his back and right shoulder. His wounds were so severe his comrades gave him little odds of survival.
Instead, they shot him up with as much morphine as possible, smeared an ¨M¨ on his forehead with his own blood to indicate another dose would kill him, and left him for medics. Mr. Dole lay on the battlefield in that crippled, painful and dazed state for hours before being evacuated.
His recuperation took years and seven surgeries, and he would never again be able to tie his own shoes. He famously gripped a pen in his right hand for the rest of his career to stabilize that side of his body.
Nevertheless, with his two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star with “V” for combat valor, a depressed Mr. Dole summoned the will to move on, learned to write with his left hand, and launched his successful career in elected office.
First elected to the House from Kansas in 1961, Mr. Dole would move on to the Senate in 1969, a seat he would hold with leadership positions until 1996, along with an unsuccessful vice presidential bid in 1976 on the Republican ticket with Gerald R. Ford.
“He was really the leader of the GOP in the U.S. for decades, almost from the moment Nixon fell out of favor, and he represented a kind of no-nonsense Republicanism,” said Douglas Brinkley, an author and American historian at Rice University. “As a World War II veteran he represented the soldiers of America and that was a gigantic credential in politics.”
Indeed, his veteran status was one element that led Ford to pick Mr. Dole as his running mate in 1976, a Republican ticket that lost that November to Democrat Jimmy Carter.
Nevertheless, military experience of some sort was essentially a required line on the resume of a politician seeking the White House from Dwight Eisenhower to Bill Clinton in 1992, Mr. Brinkley noted.
“And just like Ike, Mr. Dole was a Kansan and a fiscal conservative but not an isolationist,” Mr. Brinkley said.
Yet his distinguished military record failed to push Mr. Dole across the primary finish line as he unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for president several times. He eventually became the party’s standard bearer in 1996, only to lose to Mr. Clinton’s re-election bid.
In the months leading up to his eventual defeat, Mr. Dole had stepped down as the GOP leader in the Senate. He returned to private life and his later years saw him showered with honors.
In 1997, Mr. Dole was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his public service and he would eventually join Mr. Clinton to co-chair a scholarship fund for victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal in 2018.
In October 2015, at the age of 92, Mr. Dole returned to visit the once-savage battlegrounds of Italy with his wife, Elizabeth.
Mrs. Dole, herself a North Carolina Republican senator from 2003-3009, married Mr. Dole in 1975. Previously, Mr. Dole had been married to Phyllis Holden from 1948 until the couple divorced in 1972.
“Bob Dole stayed relevant his entire life,” Mr. Brinkley said. “He was the epitome of Midwestern Republicanism in American history.”
Mr. Dole’s colleagues of all political stripes expressed an outpouring of grief over his death and gratitude for his life as news spread on Sunday. President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden spoke with Mr. Dole’s wife, Elizabeth Dole, by phone on Sunday, according to the White House.
“Bob Dole was a man to be admired by Americans,” Mr. Biden said in a statement. “He had an unerring sense of integrity and honor. May God bless him, and may our nation draw upon his legacy of decency, dignity, good humor, and patriotism for all time.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said a “bright light of patriotic good cheer burned all the way from Bob’s teenage combat heroics through his whole career in Washington through the years since.”
“It still shone brightly, undimmed, to his last days,” Mr. McConnell said.
Former President Donald Trump said Mr. Dole served Kansas with honor and he noted, “the Republican party was made stronger by his service.”
“Our nation mourns his passing, and our prayers are with Elizabeth and his wonderful family,” said Mr. Trump.
Former President George W. Bush remembered Mr. Dole as someone representing the “finest of American values” whose friendship benefited the entire Bush family, including his presidential father, the late George H.W. Bush.
“I will always remember Bob‘s salute to my late dad at the Capitol, and now we Bushes salute Bob and give thanks for his life of principled service,” said Mr. Bush.
Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican, called Mr. Dole a “true patriot” and “dedicated public servant.”
“He was a best friend & mentor,” said Mr. Grassley on Twitter. “God bless the gr8 Bob Dole.”
Mr. Dole is survived by his wife, Elizabeth, and a daughter from his first marriage, Robin.
• Ryan Lovelace contributed to this article.
