Bob Taft

Robert Alphonso "Bob" Taft III (born January 8, 1942) is an Ohio Republican Party politician. He was the 67th Governor of Ohio between 1999 and 2007. After leaving office, Taft started working for the University of Dayton beginning August 15, 2007.

Personal background

Taft was born in 1942 in Boston, Massachusetts, to U.S. Senator Robert Alphonso Taft, Jr. and Blanca Duncan Noel. Bob's paternal grandfather was U.S. Senate Majority Leader Robert Alphonso Taft, Sr., his patrilineal great-grandfather was U.S. President and U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Howard Taft, and his patrilineal great-great-grandfather was Attorney General and Secretary of War Alphonso Taft.

He was raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he attended the Cincinnati Country Day School through the ninth grade and graduated from The Taft School. He attended Yale University, where he was a member of the Yale Political Union, and graduated with a B.A. in government in 1963. From 1963 to 1965, he served as a Peace Corps volunteer, teaching in the African nation of Tanzania. He later attended the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, receiving an M.A., again in government, in 1967. In 1976, he received his Juris Doctor from the University of Cincinnati College of Law.