John Tower

John Goodwin Tower (September 29, 1925 – April 5, 1991) was an American politician. He was the first Republican United States senator from Texas since Reconstruction. 
He served from 1961 until his retirement on January 3, 1985, after which time he was appointed as the chairman of the Reagan-appointed Tower Commission that investigated the Iran-Contra Affair. He was George Herbert Walker Bush's nominee for Secretary of Defense in 1989 but was rejected by the Senate, 53–47.
On April 5, 1991, Tower and his middle daughter, Marian, and the astronaut Sonny Carter were killed along with twenty other people in the crash of Atlantic Southeast Airlines Flight 2311.