US Congressman, US Senator. A member of the Republican Party, he represented the state of Ohio in US Congress from 1963 until 1965 and again from 1967 until 1971, and in the US Senate from 1971 until 1976. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio he was the second son of US Senator Robert Alphonso Taft, Sr. He received his formal education at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut and Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. During World War II he served as an officer in the US Navy from 1942 until 1946. After his discharge from the US Navy, he joined the Cincinnati law firm of Taft, Stettinius, and Hollister, which had been founded by his father. In 1955 he entered politics and was elected to the Ohio House of Representatives until 1962, when he ran for a seat in the US Congress and won. In 1964 he ran for the US Senate but lost to Stephen M. Young and in 1966 he was re-elected to the US Congress. In 1970 he ran for the US Senate and defeated his Democratic challenger, Howard Metzenbaum. During his term in the US Senate, he served on the Armed Services, the Labor and Public Welfare, and the Banking, Currency and Housing committees, and helped write legislation to extend the National Labor Relations Act to health care workers. In 1976 he ran for a second term and was defeated by Howard M. Metzenbaum. After leaving the US Senate, he rejoined his father's law firm in Cincinnati, Ohio. In November 1993 he suffered a stroke and fell into a coma, and died in Cincinnati, Ohio about a week later at the age of 76. He was the father of Ohio Governor Robert Alphonso Taft II, the grandson of US President and Supreme Court Justice William Howard Taft and great-grandson of US Secretary of War and Attorney General Alphonso Taft.