Clifford Hardin wasn't content to rest on his laurels as the chancellor of the University of Nebraska or as U.S. secretary of agriculture.
He wanted to help others excel, too. So he mentored people. And many of those who worked for him would rise to the highest levels of government and academia.
“He really believed in serving other people, first in education and then in government,” said Cynthia Milligan of Lincoln, one of his daughters. “He really believed one should contribute.”
Hardin died Sunday at his home in Lincoln, according to his family. He was 94.
Hardin, who grew up in Indiana and earned a Ph.D from Purdue University, assumed the chancellorship in 1954 at age 38, the youngest person in the country at the time to hold such a post.
During his tenure at NU, Hardin hired Bob Devaney to be head football coach, setting the stage for the Cornhuskers to become a college football powerhouse.
He left NU in 1969 to serve as secretary of agriculture under Richard Nixon, a post he held until 1971.
In both positions he made a priority of mentoring subordinates. Two former assistants in Washington, Richard Lyng and Clayton Yeutter, later became secretaries of agriculture as well. Thirteen administrators who worked for him at the University of Nebraska went on to become university presidents, according to his family.
“So many of the people who worked for him ended up taking his job,” said Milligan, 63.
He extended such mentorship to his children as well. Milligan is a former dean of the business school at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Another daughter, Nancy Rogers, is a former dean of the law school at Ohio State University and a former interim attorney general of Ohio.
Hardin was an ardent pipe smoker until he quit about 30 years ago. Milligan recalled that even newspaper cartoon caricatures of him used to show him with a pipe.
And if someone would ask him a question, he would always take a few puffs before answering.
“I always wondered if he used it to buy time, to phrase the response in just the right way,” she said.
Contact the writer:
444-3106, andrew.nelson@owh.com
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