Departures of note

Nancy Kassebaum Baker was an American politician who served three terms as a United States senator from Kansas from 1978 to 1997. Born in Topeka, Kansas, she was the daughter of Alf Landon, the Kansas governor and 1936 Republican presidential nominee. She earned degrees from the University of Kansas and the University of Michigan before working as a radio-station executive and serving on a local school board.

In 1978 she won election to the U.S. Senate, becoming the first woman elected to a full Senate term without her husband having previously served in Congress. Known for her independent, moderate-to-liberal Republican politics, she built bipartisan coalitions on foreign and domestic policy, chairing the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee and the Subcommittee on African Affairs.

She co-sponsored the landmark Kennedy-Kassebaum Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, which protected health coverage for workers changing jobs, and supported anti-apartheid sanctions against South Africa. After leaving the Senate in early 1997, she continued in public service roles, including with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Kaiser Family Foundation, and accompanied her second husband, former Senator Howard Baker, during his ambassadorship to Japan.