John Volpe

John Anthony Volpe (December 8, 1908 - November 11, 1994) was a Governor of Massachusetts and a U.S. Secretary of Transportation.

Volpe was born in 1908 in Wakefield, Massachusetts. He was the son of Italian immigrants Vito and Filomena (Benedetto), who had come from Abruzzo to Boston's North End in 1905; his father was in the construction business. On June 18, 1934, Volpe married Jennie Benedetto, with whom he had two children, John, Jr. and Jean (m. Rotondi).

Volpe attended Wentworth Institute in Boston and entered the construction business, building his own firm in 1930. During World War II, he volunteered to serve stateside as a United States Navy Seabees training officer. In 1953, he was appointed as the Massachusetts Commissioner of Public Works, and in 1956 he was appointed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower as the first Federal Highway Administrator.

He was elected Governor of Massachusetts in 1960, and served from 1961 to 1963, before narrowly losing reelection in 1962 to Endicott Peabody. In 1964, he ran for Governor again and won, and was re-elected in 1966 for the first four-year term in Massachusetts history.

During his administration, Governor Volpe signed legislation to ban racial imbalances in education, reorganized the state's Board of Education, liberalized birth control laws, and increased public housing for low-income families. Governor Volpe also raised revenues by increasing the state sales tax to three percent. He served as President of the National Governor's Association from 1967 to 1968.

In 1968, Governor Volpe ran as a "favorite son" candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. Following the election of Richard M. Nixon, Volpe was named Secretary of Transportation. He resigned as Governor to assume the cabinet post, and served in that position from 1969 to 1973. During his administration as Secretary of Transportation, Amtrak was created. In 1973, Volpe was nominated by President Nixon and confirmed by the Senate as U.S. Ambassador to Italy, a position he held until 1977.

Governor Volpe died in 1994, and is buried in Forest Glade Cemetery in Wakefield. The John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center in Cambridge was named in his memory, as well as the Governor John A. Volpe Library at Wakefield High School in Wakefield.

The papers of John A. Volpe are in the Archives and Special Collections of the Northeastern University Libraries, in Boston MA.

External links

• Official Commonwealth of Massachusetts Governor Biography