Bios

Vice President Richard B. Cheney has had a distinguished career as a businessman and public servant, serving four Presidents and as an elected official. Throughout his service, Mr. Cheney served with duty, honor, and unwavering leadership, gaining him the respect of the American people during trying military times.

Mr. Cheney was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, on January 30, 1941 and grew up in Casper, Wyoming. He earned his bachelor's and master's of arts degrees from the University of Wyoming. His career in public service began in 1969 when he joined the Nixon Administration, serving in a number of positions at the Cost of Living Council, at the Office of Economic Opportunity, and within the White House.

When Gerald Ford assumed the Presidency in August 1974, Mr. Cheney served on the transition team and later as Deputy Assistant to the President. In November 1975, he was named Assistant to the President and White House Chief of Staff, a position he held throughout the remainder of the Ford Administration.

After he returned to his home state of Wyoming in 1977, Mr. Cheney was elected to serve as the state's sole Congressman in the U.S. House of Representatives. He was re-elected five times and elected by his colleagues to serve as Chairman of the Republican Policy Committee from 1981 to 1987. He was elected Chairman of the House Republican Conference in 1987 and elected House Minority Whip in 1988. During his tenure in the House, Mr. Cheney earned a reputation as a man of knowledge, character, and accessibility.

Mr. Cheney also served a crucial role when America needed him most. As Secretary of Defense from March 1989 to January 1993, Mr. Cheney directed two of the largest military campaigns in recent history - Operation Just Cause in Panama and Operation Desert Storm in the Middle East. He was responsible for shaping the future of the U.S. military in an age of profound and rapid change as the Cold War ended. For his leadership in the Gulf War, Secretary Cheney was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George Bush on July 3, 1991.

Mr. Cheney was the 46th Vice President of the United States and served two terms under President George W. Bush.

Mr. Cheney is widely acknowledged as the most powerful and influential Vice President ever. While serving in the nation’s second highest office, he transformed national security and intelligence policy. In the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001, he expanded the authority of the executive branch, and played a major role in creating policies that protected America and her citizens from further attacks. Domestically he was pivotal in reorganizing the government to defend the homeland, negotiating the Bush Administration’s tax cuts, chairing the Energy Task Force, and overseeing the annual federal budget process. Cheney also played an instrumental role in personnel matters as he managed the transition to power in 2000, following the closest presidential election in American history, overseeing the selection of President George W. Bush’s first Cabinet, and later screening nominees for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Mr. Cheney married his high school sweetheart, Lynne Ann Vincent, in 1964, and they have grown daughters, Elizabeth and Mary, three granddaughters and three grandsons.

Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Dick Cheney, has loved history for as long as she can remember, and she has spent much of her professional life writing and speaking about the importance of knowing history and teaching it well.

As chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1986 to 1993, she published American Memory, a report that warned about the failure of schools to transmit knowledge of the past to upcoming generations. “A system of education that fails to nurture memory of the past denies its students a great deal,” Mrs. Cheney wrote: “the satisfactions of mature thought, an attachment to abiding concerns, a perspective on human existence.” Currently, as a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, she emphasizes the particular value of knowing our nation’s history. “One of the important lessons we can learn is that freedom isn’t inevitable,” she says. "This realization should make the liberty we enjoy all the more important to us, all the more worth defending."

Mrs. Cheney has written articles about history for numerous publications on topics ranging from woman suffrage in the West to the way Americans celebrated the country’s centennial. She was a member of the Commission on the Bicentennial of the Constitution and served on Texas Governor George W. Bush's education team. She was part of a group that revised Texas standards for the study of history.

Over the course of her career, Mrs. Cheney has authored or co-authored twelve books. One of the first, Kings of the Hill (second edition, 1996), was co-written with Dick Cheney, then-Congressman from Wyoming. Kings of the Hill profiles various political figures, among them Henry Clay and Sam Rayburn, who played powerful roles in the House of Representatives. Mrs. Cheney’s 1995 book, Telling the Truth, analyzed the effect of postmodernism on study in the humanities. In Blue Skies, No Fences (2007), Mrs. Cheney took a personal approach to history, recounting her years growing up in Casper, Wyoming, and telling the stories of the men and women whose journeys brought her family to the high plains of the West.

Mrs. Cheney has written five bestselling books about American history for children and their families, and well over a million copies of these books are in print. The first, America: A Patriotic Primer, released in May 2002, is an alphabet book for children of all ages and their families that celebrates the ideas and ideals that are the foundations of our country. The second, A Is for Abigail: An Almanac of Amazing American Women, released in September 2003, tells the story of women’s contributions to American history. The third, When Washington Crossed the Delaware: A Wintertime Story for Young Patriots, released in October 2004, tells of the dramatic military campaign that began on Christmas night, 1776. The fourth, A Time for Freedom: What Happened When in America, released in October 2005, puts the great events and figures of American history into context and tells the story of freedom in America. The fifth, Our 50 States: A Family Adventure Across America, released in 2006, provides a state-by-state  celebration of the cities, historical figures, artists, innovators, and landmarks that together create the wonder that is the United States. Her most recent book, We the People: The Story of Our Constitution (2008), chronicles the events of the summer of 1787 and the remarkable process by which America’s Founding Fathers framed the Constitution - a document that, in Mrs. Cheney’s words, "created our nation and offered a vision of ordered liberty to all the world."

In addition to donating a portion of her proceeds from children’s books to charity, Mrs. Cheney established the James Madison Book Award in April 2003 in an effort to encourage historical knowledge. As one of Mrs. Cheney’s signature initiatives, this Award includes the James Madison Book Award Fund, which has annually presented a $10,000 award to the author of a book that best represents excellence in bringing knowledge and understanding of American history to young people. The 2008 winner is The Many Rides of Paul Revere by James Cross Giblin. And winner of the $5,000, one-time Lifetime Achievement Award, also presented in 2008, is Albert Marrin, whose newest book is The Great Adventure: Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of Modern America.

Mrs. Cheney earned her Bachelor of Arts degree with highest honors from Colorado College, her Master of Arts from the University of Colorado, and her Ph.D. with a specialization in 19th-Century British literature from the University of Wisconsin. She is the recipient of awards and honorary degrees from numerous colleges and universities.

Vice President and Mrs. Cheney were married in 1964. They have two grown daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, three granddaughters, and three grandsons.