Mills E. Godwin, Jr.

Mills Edwin Godwin, Jr. (November 19, 1914 – January 30, 1999) of Chuckatuck, Virginia, was an American politician who was the 60th and 62nd Governor of Virginia for two non-consecutive terms, from 1966 to 1970 and from 1974 to 1978.

In his first term, he was a member of the Democratic Party, and was the last Virginia Governor elected as a part of the Byrd Organization, the conservative Democratic establishment that dominated the state's politics for over three decades. He was succeeded by the election of A. Linwood Holton, Jr., the first non-Democratic governor in over 80 years. By 1973, when he ran for a second term, Godwin had switched to the Republican Party, as the dominance of the Democrats in Virginia politics receded and the Byrd political machine had disintegrated. He was the first governor in the history of the United States to be elected as both a Republican and Democrat.

Youth, education, family

Godwin was born in Nansemond County (now Suffolk, Virginia) and educated at the Norfolk Division of The College of William and Mary, now Old Dominion University. He married Katherine Thomas Beale of Holland, also in Nansemond County. They adopted one child, Becky Godwin (b. 1954). In August 1968, while Governor Godwin was attending the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois, Becky and her mother were vacationing at the Oceanfront area of Virginia Beach when Becky was killed in a freak lightning accident.