A member of the Republican Party, he served as the 66th Governor of Rhode Island, as the Secretary of the Navy, and as a United States Senator.

He had two daughters and four sons, one of whom is former Rhode Island Governor and former United States Senator Lincoln Chafee.

At Yale, he was a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon (Phi chapter) and Skull and Bones fraternities.

Chafee became active in behind-the-scenes Rhode Island politics by helping elect a mayor of Providence in the early 1950s.

The election was notable for being one of the narrowest in Rhode Island history, Chafee received 50.06% of the vote to Notte's 49.94%, winning by a margin of just 0.12%.

However, Chafee quickly became popular with both Rhode Island's Republicans and Democrats, allowing him to win re-election by margins of almost 2-to-1 in 1964 and 1966.

The 1964 victory made Chafee one of the few bright spots in a disastrous year for Republicans nationally; Lyndon Johnson carried the state with an unheard-of 83 percent of the vote.

As governor, Chafee helped create the state's public transportation administration as well as what was known as the Green Acres program, a conservation effort.

Emblematic of this was his decision to elevate Admiral Elmo Zumwalt as Chief of Naval Operations over 33 more senior officers, and his judicious handling of the USS Pueblo situation, in which North Korean forces, during the previous administration, had boarded and captured a navy intelligence ship.

[10][11] He joined the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works in 1977 and made environmental matters a chief concern, often breaking with his party to the delight of conservation groups.

He also was an architect of the 1980 Superfund program to clean up hazardous waste sites as well as the Oil Pollution Act of 1990.

He sponsored a bill that, if passed, would have prohibited the "manufacture, importation, exportation, sale, purchase, transfer, receipt, possession, or transportation of handguns and hand ammunition."

Chafee voted in favor of the bill establishing Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a federal holiday and the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987 (as well as to override President Reagan's veto).

He sponsored legislation that increased funds to states to assist youths in making the transition from foster care to independent living; recognized the need for special help for youths ages 18 to 21 who have left foster care; offered states greater flexibility in designing their independent living programs; and, established accountability for states in implementing independent living programs.

[16] In October 1999, less than two weeks before his death, Chafee was one of four Senate Republicans to vote in favor of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

[citation needed] On October 24, 1999, around seven months after Chafee announced his retirement from the Senate, he died from heart failure at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, two days after his 77th birthday.