American politician and US Vice President under Jimmy Carter, former US Ambassador to Japan, and former Senator (elected 1964) and Attorney General (1960) for the state of Minnesota. He was known as being ambitious, industrious and tactful.
Mondale was born second of four children in Ceylon, Minnesota, to a Methodist minister and his wife, a part-time music teacher. Mondale’s father was 49 years old by the time he married Mondale’s mother, having lost his first wife from encephalitis. Nicknamed Fritz at birth, his real boyhood home was Elmore, which was where the family moved in 1937. Following his exploits on the football field, he became known as “Crazylegs” in high school. He attended Macalister College in St. Paul, Minn., considering a career of social work or teaching. But shortly after he heard Hubert Humphrey, mayor of Minneapolis at the time, his interests turned to politics. Humphrey would become a major mentor in his life.
After his father died in 1948, Mondale headed for Washington as executive secretary of the college branch of Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), a liberal anticommunist group that Hubert Humphrey helped found. He returned to Minnesota in 1950 and finished his undergraduate studies at the University of Minnesota.
He enlisted in the Army from 1951-1953, and spent the Korean War years guarding Fort Knox. He received his Law degree from the University of Minnesota in 1956. After law school, he took a job in a Minneapolis law firm. After a year, he started his own practice.
In May 1960, Mondale was named Minnesota state attorney general, serving until 1964. After John Kennedy’s assassination, Mondale volunteered to head up Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 re-election campaign in Minnesota. With Hubert Humphrey as Johnson’s running mate, Mondale was appointed to Humphrey’s vacant Minnesota Senate seat in 1964, where he served until 1977, focusing on civil rights and child welfare. In 1975, he wrote “Accountability of Power.” He became the liberal northerner that Jimmy Carter needed to balance his presidential ticket in 1977, and he was US Vice President from 1977-1981 under Carter.
He ran against Ronald Reagan for the US presidency in 1984, and lost. After he left office, he returned to private law practice before being named ambassador to Japan in 1993.
He met his wife, the former Joan Adams, on a blind date and they became engaged less than two months later. They had three kids; Teddy, 12 October 1957; Eleanor, 19 January 1960; and William, 7 February 1962. His daughter Eleanor died of brain cancer on 17 September 2011.
Walter Mondale died on 19 April 2021 in his Minneapolis home at age 93 from natural causes during his sleep. Up until his death, he was the oldest living former U.S. vice president.
Link to Wikipedia biography