Gardner, John William

Gardner, John William, 1912–2002, American public official, U.S. secretary of health, education, and welfare (1965–68), b. Los Angeles. After teaching psychology at Connecticut and Mt. Holyoke colleges and serving as an intelligence officer with the U.S. Marine Corps in World War II, he joined the Carnegie Corp. of New York in 1946, becoming its vice president in 1949 and its president in 1955. Also in 1955 he became president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. A Republican, he was named by President Lyndon B. Johnson to succeed Anthony J. Celebrezze as secretary of health, education, and welfare in July, 1965, but resigned in Mar., 1968, becoming head of the National Urban Coalition. In 1970 Gardner founded Common Cause, a nonpartisan citizens' lobby; he served as its chairman from 1970 to 1977. Gardner was a professor of public service at Stanford Univ. from 1989 to 1996. He is the author of Excellence: Can We Be Equal and Excellent Too? (1961), Self-Renewal: The Individual and the Innovative Society (1964), and No Easy Victories (1968).