Former U.S. Sen. Charles Percy dead at 91

WASHINGTON, Sept. 17 (UPI) -- Charles H. Percy, who represented Illinois for nearly two decades in the U.S. Senate, died early Saturday, a spokeswoman for the family said. He was 91.

The Chicago Tribune reported Kate Kelly, a spokeswoman for WETA, the public broadcasting station in Washington D.C., where Percy's daughter Sharon Rockefeller is president and CEO, said the former senator died at 2:30 a.m. Eastern time at a Washington hospice.

Percy, a moderate Republican, became a senator in 1966 after defeating the late Paul Douglas, a Democrat, but lost his seat to another Democrat, Paul Simon, in 1984.

Percy left the Senate Appropriations Committee in 1972 to become a member of the Foreign Relations Committee and became its chairman in 1980.

He had opposed the Vietnam War, supported international nuclear non-proliferation and backed federal consumer protection measures and tougher enforcement of drug laws, the Tribune said.

Percy became the first senator to urge a special prosecutor investigate Watergate.

His daughter, Sharon Rockefeller, revealed in March 2009 that he had Alzheimer's disease.

Before his political career, Percy had been a "brilliant businessman," the Tribune said. In 1949, he became chief executive of Bell & Howell Corp., the youngest person to head a major U.S. corporation at the time.

He made an unsuccessful run for governor in 1963 against the late Democratic Gov. Otto Kerner.

Even before taking elective office, at 40, Percy had been seen as a potential president by, among others, President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Percy, a graduate of the University of Chicago, had been an ensign in the Navy when he married Jeanne Dickerson, with whom he had three children. She died in 1947 of a reaction to penicillin. Percy married Loraine Guyer in 1950.

The family will have a private service.