Four-term US Sen. Christopher “Kit” Bond remembered for training a generation of Missouri leaders

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Christopher “Kit” Bond, a Republican who was Missouri’s youngest governor before serving four terms in the U.S. Senate, was remembered Tuesday as a beloved statesman who helped train a generation of leaders.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol escorted his body from St. Louis, where he died last week at the age of 86, to the Missouri Capitol in Jefferson City, where hundreds of people gathered for a memorial service. Bond is to lie in state through Wednesday so members of the public can pay their respects.

“Over and over again, Kit launched the careers of young people, talented, committed, dedicated people who later, after appointment, found opportunity beckoning them to achievement levels they hadn’t anticipated,” said John Ashcroft, who was a governor, senator and attorney general under President George W. Bush. “Kit was a person of both individual and governmental integrity. I have no recollection of anytime where Kit failed to live up to his commitments.”

As a member of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, Bond secured federal money for big and small projects in Missouri, scoffing at government watchdog groups that considered him a master of pork-barrel spending.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver recalled that while he was serving as mayor of Kansas City, a monument to honor World War I veterans known as Liberty Memorial had fallen into disrepair. He likened the 217-foot (66-meter) tall structure that was built after a burst of postwar patriotism to the Leaning Tower of Pisa. He said Bond stepped in with federal dollars to help restore it.

“Working together as friends was the propellant that allowed us, with others, to alter the landscape of Kansas City,” Cleaver said.

Early in his career, Bond was considered a political wunderkind. When he took office at age 33 as Missouri’s youngest governor, he was also the state’s first Republican chief executive in about three decades and garnered consideration as a vice presidential candidate. His early success stalled when he lost a reelection bid, but he later rebounded to win another term as governor before being elected to the Senate in 1986 and eventually becoming the patriarch of the Missouri Republican Party.

Testaments to Bond’s longevity in the public arena are stamped across Missouri. A federal courthouse in Jefferson City and a life sciences center at the University of Missouri-Columbia are named after him. A highway bridge crossing the Missouri River in Hermann and one in Kansas City also carry his name.

“Kit Bond was an exceptional person who was blessed with many talents,” said former U.S. Sen. John Danforth. “He was very smart. He was highly educated. He had boundless energy. He wanted for nothing. He could have clung on to what was his and lived comfortably only for himself. But that was not what he did. He invested his talents, put them at risk, and he produced such a great return to the state.”

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Hollingsworth reported from Kansas City, Missouri.