Tsongas Dead At 55

BOSTON (AllPolitics, Jan. 19) -- Former Massachusetts senator and one-time presidential candidate Paul Tsongas died Saturday night of pneumonia.

Tsongas was 55.

His life devoted to public service, Tsongas was one of the first nationally-known Democrats to push a pro-business agenda. His economic vision caught on long enough to put him briefly at the top of the 1992 presidential primaries.

The son of an American mother and Greek immigrant father who ran a dry cleaner, Paul Efthemios Tsongas attended Darmouth and Yale Law. Afterwards he joined the Peace Corp.

He began his political career in his hometown of Lowell, Mass. where Tsongas rose through the local political ranks until voters sent him to Congress in 1974. He entered the Senate in 1978.

In 1984, Tsongas opted not to a seek a second Senate term when he was diagnosed with lymph cancer.

Eventually he beat the disease, twice, but the fight so weakened his body that he suffered other ailments. Tsongas was hospitalized two weeks ago with liver problems stemming from the cancer treatments.

Doctors say he was cancer-free when he died.

President Bill Clinton today told a Democratic National Committee pre-inaugural gathering, "Our country is deeply indebted to him for having had the courage to stay active in public life and to battle through his own illness and his own pain and his own disappointment to continue to fight for America's well-being."

Tsongas' wife, Niki, thanked Boston's Brigham and Women's hospital, where he had been hospitalized since Jan. 3, and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where Tsongas has also been treated.

"Over the past 13 1/2 years, many gifted and compassionate professionals gave Paul, and us, hope and good health in his battle against cancer," she said in a statement. "He believed in them and they never let him down."

The former senator will be buried in Lowell on Thursday. Services will be held at the Transfigural Greek Orthodox Church.