Reporter's Notebook: Former Gov. Taft comes from famous family

SANDUSKY — Former Ohio Gov. Bob Taft said it's hard to say when he realized as a kid that his family was a lot different from other Ohio families. Taft, 81, was elected as Ohio's Republican governor in 1998 and won a second term in 2002. He once beat Sherrod Brown in an election, for secretary of state, an achievement not many Republicans can brag about. These days he's a distinguished research associate at the University of Dayton. On Wednesday, I interviewed Taft for an article on Issue 1, next month's controversial state question, but I also couldn't resist asking about his famous family: • Taft's great-grandfather, William Howard Taft, was a U.S. president, from 1909 to 1913, and later also Supreme Court chief justice. Nobody else has ever held both offices. • His grandfather, Robert Alphonso Taft Sr., was a U.S. senator and Senate majority leader. • And Taft's dad, Robert Taft Jr., was a congressman and U.S. senator. I have to keep this article at a reasonable length, so I'm going to leave out the Taft who was governor of Rhode Island and the one who was U.S. secretary of war. I also don't have space to say much about "America's first woman voter," Lydia Chapin Taft (1712-1778) or Samuel Taft (1735-1816), a Revolutionary War soldier who ran the Samuel Taft Tavern, where George Washinton once stayed. Gov. Taft grew up in Cincinnati. I asked him if he remembers figuring out that his background was different from the other kids at school. He does remember watching the 1952 national Republican convention on TV, in the early days of black and white television when Dwight Eisenhower defeated Taft's grandfather to win the presidential nomination. I asked if that meant he won an argument over whether he got to stay up late that night and watch TV, but he doesn't remember. He can't recall now who was minding him, but his parents also were at the GOP convention. If you research American history, the name "Taft" comes up in endless ways. For example, when Michigan Congressman Gerald Ford spoke in Sandusky, on Oct. 20, 1965, he was serving as the guest speaker for the Robert Taft Memorial Association Dinner. Papers at Ford's presidential library and museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan, show that Ford claimed that when he was having a bad day at work, the sounds of the Senator Robert Taft bell tower at the national capitol building would save him. "Often when the weight of political debate hangs heavily on my shoulders and I am weary because of the problems within my party, the sounds of the bells give renewed hope and confidence," Ford said. The Robert A. Taft Memorial and Carillon, on the U.S. Capitol grounds, includes a bronze statue of Taft's grandfather.