Former Hawai‘I Lt. Gov. Tom Gill died today at 10:47 a.m. at Leahi Hospital, his son Eric Gill said.

He was 87.

The Hawai‘i-born son of an architect and newspaperwoman, Gill perhaps is best known as the brash lieutenant governor of Hawai‘I from 1966 to 1970 under the late John A. Burns who unsuccessfully challenged Burns for the state’s top elected post in 1970.

He also made a failed bid for governor in 1974 against George Ariyoshi, who had succeeded him as lieutenant governor in 1970 and who had become governor after Burns was stricken with cancer and resigned in 1973.

But Gill was a key figure in Hawai‘I history for other reasons. In his role as the leader of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party from the 1950s to 1970s, Gill helped bring about the 1954 Democratic Revolution which ousted the Republican Party from power after its decades-long domination of the Territorial Legislature. At the time, Gill was O‘ahu county chairman and he is credited with helping write most of that year’s state party platform that helped draw young Hawai‘i residents into the Democratic fold.

A product of Hawai‘i’s public schools, he graduated from the University of California-Berkeley law school in 1951. He returned to Hawai‘i where he became a labor attorney and quickly got involved in the Democratic Party.

He was elected to the Territorial House of Representatives in 1958 and was majority floor leader in the first Hawai‘I State Legislature from 1959 to 1962.

In 1962, Gill was elected to the U.S. House and helped write civil rights legislation.

Gill then challenged Republican U.S. Sen. Hiram Fong in 1964 and lost.

Burns appointed Gill to head the new state Office of Economic Opportunity, a job he held from 1965-1966.

But against Burns’ wishes, Gill ran for, and then easily won the lieutenant governor’s post in 1966, leading to chilly relations between the two climaxing with the 1970 gubernatorial fight. That election was memorialized in the Tom Coffman book “Catch a Wave.”