Remembering Walter Mondale

Former Vice President Walter Mondale, a Minnesotan whose public career spanned seven decades, including serving as an influential senator and Democratic nominee for president, died on April 19 at the age of 93.

“He was the moving force behind the creation of the federal agency that funds civil legal aid in our country,” School of Law Dean Robert Vischer said. “Among many other public policy legacies he leaves, that work has touched millions of lives, providing access to our legal system for those who would otherwise be voiceless.”

Mondale received an honorary degree from St. Thomas in 1973 and the law school’s Dignitatis Humanae Award in 2019. Revisit photos from these events and a 1981 lecture in the photo gallery below.

Mondale was born in the small town of Ceylon, Minnesota, rising to become Minnesota attorney general in 1960 and U.S. senator in 1964. He resigned in 1976 ahead of becoming vice president under President Jimmy Carter in 1977. He was the Democratic nominee for president in 1984, choosing a woman, Geraldine Ferraro, to run as his vice president. He lost the election to Ronald Reagan and returned to Minnesota, where he worked as a lawyer and law professor until his retirement.