Edgar Whitcomb

Edgar Doud Whitcomb (November 6, 1917 – February 4, 2016) was an American attorney, writer and politician, who served as the 43rd governor of Indiana. His term as governor began a major rift in the Indiana Republican Party as urban Republicans became more numerous than rural Republicans, leading to a shift in the priorities of the party leadership.

Whitcomb found himself opposed by speaker of the house Otis R. Bowen on a number of measures and for control of the party leadership. Despite his opposition, Whitcomb was able to increase tax revenue by 8% without raising tax rates through improved collection and auditing techniques, created a panel of business leaders to recommend governmental reforms aimed at increasing efficiency that allowed the state to reduce its workforce by 10% and fought for a number of budgetary saving measures primarily through reducing state employee wages and spending in non-essential areas.

After leaving office, Whitcomb ran for the U.S. Senate in 1976 but was defeated in the Republican primary by Indianapolis Mayor Richard Lugar. Whitcomb returned to the practice of law and moved to Seymour, Indiana. In 1985, he retired, divorced from his wife of thirty-three years and took up sailboating. He sailed around the Mediterranean Sea, across the Atlantic Ocean in 1990 and geographically sailed around the world in 1995, although he was not able to return to his exact starting point, because his ship ran aground on a reef in the Gulf of Suez. After two days of trying to free the ship, he made the decision to abandon it. Returning to Indiana, he moved to a secluded log cabin on the banks of the Ohio River within the Hoosier National Forest near Rome, Indiana in 2000. He married for a second time in 2013 and died in 2016, aged 98.