Esteemed as much for his polished rhetorical skills and singing ability as for his inarguable good fortune in the political arena, New York-born William Quinn ushered Hawai'i through the transition from territory to state.
Quinn graduated from Harvard Law School and served in the Navy during World War II. He visited Hawai'i during his Navy years, but it was the promise of a job with a leading law firm that convinced him to settle in the Islands in 1947.
Ten years later, President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed the 38-year-old Quinn, a Republican, governor of the territory, part of a strategy to bolster Republican strongholds in Hawai'i, Alaska and American Samoa.
Quinn was credited with helping to settle the long sugar strike of 1958.
He was elected governor after statehood, but his bid to fill hundreds of appointed positions with people of similar political sensibilities was stymied by the state Senate's Democratic minority, and by his lieutenant governor, who argued the right to make half the appointments.
In his 1961 message to the Legislature, he warned Waikiki was rapidly becoming Paradise Lost.''
Quinn failed in his re-election bid in 1962 as Democrats for the first time took control of the governor's office and both houses of the Legislature.
