Former U.S. Sen. John V. Tunney, who as a young lawyer and rising California political star toppled an entrenched Republican incumbent before facing his own defeat just six years later, has died. He played a leading role in keeping the United States from getting involved in the civil war in Angola. Young Tunney grew up with his two brothers and sister on the family’s 200-acre Connecticut estate, Star Meadow Farm, near Stamford, and attended private schools. Tunney earned a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Yale in 1956 and received his law degree in 1959. “There is nothing sadder than a 42-year-old former senator hanging around Washington,” Tunney told The Times a month after losing the election.

Source: Los Angeles Times January 13, 2018 05:03 UTC