Advertisement |
John Fife Symington III (born August 12, 1945, in New York City) is an American businessman and the former Governor of the U.S. state of Arizona from 1991 until his resignation in 1997.
Symington comes from a distinguished Maryland family; he is a great-grandson of steel magnate Henry Clay Frick, and his father J. Fife Symington Jr. (1910–2007) was United States ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago 1969-1971. His cousin, Stuart Symington, was a U.S. Senator from Missouri and father of James Wadsworth Symington, a U.S. Representative from that state. He is married to the former Ann Olin Pritzlaff, an ordained deacon in the Episcopal Church and an heiress of the Olin family. They have five children and four grandchildren.
He attended the prestigious Gilman School in Baltimore, then attended Harvard University, graduating in 1968 with a degree in Dutch art history and was a member of the Porcellian Club. He served in the United States Air Force during the Vietnam War, stationed at Luke Air Force Base in Maricopa County, Arizona. He remained in Arizona and became involved in real estate development, founding his own company, the Symington Company, in 1976.