George Shultz, who served in four Cabinet positions between 1969 and 1989, was born on this day in New York City. He remains only one of two persons to do so. The other was Elliot Richardson.

Shultz was labor secretary from 1969 to 1970, director of the Office of Management and Budget from 1970 to 1972 and treasury secretary from 1972 to 1974 under President Richard Nixon. He returned to government service in 1982 when President Ronald Reagan tapped him to be secretary of state.

Before entering politics, Shultz taught economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned his doctorate, and at the University of Chicago. He was dean of the Graduate School of Business there from 1962 to 1969. Between 1974 and 1982, Shultz was an executive at Bechtel, an international engineering company, eventually becoming Bechtel’s president.

After Shultz graduated from Princeton in 1942, he joined the U.S. Marine Corps, serving in the Pacific theater until 1945.

In 1987, while on a China-bound plane as secretary of state, a reporter asked Shultz to confirm that he had decorated his posterior with a tiger tattoo while at Princeton. “My gosh,” Shultz responded, “I have been investigated by the FBI, the IRS, by the Senate Intelligence Committee. My mail is opened. I don’t have any secrets left. That’s the only thing I have left — what is on my rear end.”

After leaving office, Shultz became the first prominent Republican to call for the legalization of recreational drugs. He added his signature to an ad, published in The New York Times on June 8, 1998, entitled, “We believe the global war on drugs is now causing more harm than drug abuse itself.”

On his 95^th birthday, Shultz remains active as a distinguished fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

SOURCE: “TURMOIL AND TRIUMPH: MY YEARS AS SECRETARY OF STATE,” BY GEORGE SHULTZ (1993).