Howard Callaway - Later Years

Later Years

A week after the Maddox inauguration, Callaway replaced former President Eisenhower as director of Freedoms Foundation, a nonpartisan group dedicated to patriotic causes located in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. A few months later, he became the Georgia Republican nationcal committeeman and Richard M. Nixon's 1968 "southern coordinator." In 1973, he began a stint as Secretary of the Army under Presidents Nixon and Ford. After managing the first phase of the Ford election campaign, Callaway resigned in 1976, when NBC News alleged his involvement in a conflict-of-interest case relating to the United States Forest Service in Colorado. A congressional investigation found "no positive evidence of impropriety." In 1977, Harper's Magazine concluded that Callaway had been a scapegoat in the matter.

In 1976, Callaway and his family subsequently moved to Colorado, where he acquired the Crested Butte Mountain Resort. In 1980, he was an unsuccessful candidate for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate in Colorado, having been defeated by an intraparty moderate challenger, Mary Estill Buchanan. Buchanan then lost to the incumbent Democrat Gary Hart, despite the victory in Colorado of the Reagan/Bush ticket. From 1981 to 1987, Callaway served as the chairman of the Colorado Republican Party and as head of the political action committee GOPAC.

Callaway's son-in-law, Terry Considine, also a Republican, ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate from Colorado in 1992, losing to Democratic (later Republican) U.S. Representative Ben Nighthorse Campbell.