Attorney General: William B. Saxbe
William Bart Saxbe was born in Mechanicsburg, Ohio, on June 24, 1916. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in 1940 and his Bachelor of Laws degree in 1948, both from The Ohio State University. He was admitted to the Ohio bar that same year. Saxbe served in the U.S. Army from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1952. He was then elected to the Ohio House of Representatives in 1946, where he was reelected three times, and served as speaker of the house in 1953 and 1954. Saxbe then returned to private practice. In 1956, he was elected attorney general of Ohio and reelected in 1962 and 1966, serving as the state’s chief legal officer longer than any attorney general in Ohio history. Saxbe served as a U.S. Senator from Ohio from 1969 until 1974. On January 4, 1974, President Richard M. Nixon appointed William Saxbe as Attorney General of the United States. He continued in that office under the administration of President Gerald R. Ford until February 1, 1975. He then served as U.S. Ambassador to India until 1977, returning to the private practice of law in Mechanicsburg, Ohio, thereafter. He died on August 24, 2010.
Roswell Keller was born in New York City in 1915. He studied at the Art Students League of New York, Columbia University, and at Atelier. For 14 years, he was an illustrator for Ladies' Home Journal and with a large Paris magazine publisher for ten years. Upon his return to the United States, he became a painter of portraits. Keller's portrait of Attorney General Saxbe was unveiled in February 1975. The artist died in August of that same year.