Biography Pages of the: Mark Odom Hatfield's long career in
Oregon politics began in 1951 when he was elected into the
Oregon state legislature as the representative for Marion
County. In 1955 he was elected state senator and in 1957, he
became the youngest Secretary of State in Oregon's history. In
1958, Hatfield ran against the incumbent Democratic governor
Robert D. Holmes and won the governorship. He was only 36.
Hatfield was born in Marion County, Oregon, in 1922. He attended
Willamette University and finished his degree before he was
called to the Pacific Theater in World War II. His visit to
Hiroshima, Japan, a month after the atom bomb had devastated the
city, formed his moral, and later political, stance against
nuclear weapons. After the war, he attended Stanford University
for graduate work and returned to Salem in 1949 to teach
political science. He was dean of students at Willamette during
his first two terms in the Oregon legislature. He married
Antoinette Kuzmanich in 1958 and the couple had fo