Stanley K. Hathaway
American politician (1924-2005)
Stanley Knapp Hathaway (July 19, 1924 – October 4, 2005) was an American politician who served as the 27th governor of Wyoming from 1967 to 1975 and as the 40th United States secretary of the interior under President Gerald Ford from June to October 1975.
Early life and military service
Stanley K. Hathaway, or "Stan" as he was known to most of his friends and associates, was born on July 19, 1924, in Osceola, Nebraska, the fifth of six children born to Lily (Koehler) and Robert C. Knapp. Following his mother's death when he was two years old, he was adopted by a cousin, Velma, and her husband Franklin Earl Hathaway. The couple homesteaded and farmed near Huntley, Wyoming. Stan Hathaway received his early education near there in one-room country schools at Table Mountain and at New Fairview, and then attended Huntley High School, where he graduated as class valedictorian in 1941.
After enrolling briefly at the University of Wyoming, Hathaway left school in early 1942 to enlist in the Army Air Corps following the attack on Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, and was trained as a radio operator and gunner. He was assigned to the Eighth Air Force's 401st Bomb Group, flying B-17 Bombers from England, and took part in 35 combat missions over France and Germany, with his unit often suffering heavy casualties.
On one mission under General Jimmy Doolittle over Leipzig, Germany, Hathaway's plane and crew took heavy enemy fire while making a series of three runs at their target, an oil refinery. After managing to return to base, the crew counted 115 holes in their B-17 from Nazi fighter-plane rounds and anti-aircraft flak. During their entire Leipzig mission under General Doolittle, a total of 56 American planes and more than 500 American troops were lost, and, overall, Hathaway's unit suffered a 50% casualty rate during World War II.
In the fall of 1944, his crew was on a mission to Frankfurt, Germany, when their plane was shot down by anti-aircraft fire.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q707704. VIAF identifies the subject as 9134473. The Library of Congress control number is n97088930. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1924, 2005, 1967 and 1975.
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This entry incorporates text from “Stanley K. Hathaway” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.