Dick Thornburgh

Early life and education[edit]

Thornburgh was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on July 16, 1932, the son of Alice (Sanborn) and Charles Garland Thornburgh, an engineer.^[1] Thornburgh attended Mercersburg Academy then Yale University from which he obtained an engineering degree in 1954. Subsequently, he received a law degree from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law in 1957, where he served as an editor of the Law Review. Thornburgh was inducted into Omicron Delta Kappa at the University of Pittsburgh in 1973, and was later awarded the society's highest honor, the Laurel Crowned Circle Award, in 1996. He subsequently was awarded honorary degrees from 32 other colleges and universities. He joined the Pittsburgh-based law firm Kirkpatrick & Lockhart in 1959.^[2]


Thornburgh married Ginny Hooton, and they had three sons together (John, David and Peter). Ginny Hooton was killed in an automobile accident in 1960, which left Peter, the youngest of their three sons, with physical and intellectual disability.^[3] In 1963 Thornburgh was remarried, to Ginny Judson, with whom he had another son, Bill, in 1966. Ginny (Judson) Thornburgh was a former schoolteacher from New York, who holds degrees from Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, and the Harvard Graduate School of Education. A lifelong advocate of people with disabilities, she served as Director of the Interfaith Initiative of the American Association of People with Disabilities, based in Washington, D.C., has co-authored and edited "That All May Worship," an award-winning handbook for religious congregations working to include people with all types of disabilities. She received the Hubert H. Humphrey Civil Rights Award from the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights in April 2005.


The Thornburghs have four sons (John, David, Peter, and Bill), six grandchildren, and five great-granddaughters and two great-grandsons. As parents of a son with a disability, they took an interest in the needs of people with disabilities and, with their son Peter, were named "Family of the Year". Both Ginny and Dick Thornburgh were featured speakers at the Vatican Conference on Disabilities held in Rome in November 1992, and were co-recipients in 2003 of the Henry B. Betts Award, the proceeds from which were used to establish the Thornburgh Family Lecture Series on Disability Law and Policy at the University of Pittsburgh. As Attorney General of the United States, Thornburgh played a leading role in the enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act. In 2002, Thornburgh received the Wiley A. Branton Award of The Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs in recognition of his "commitment to the civil rights of people with disabilities."