AUGUSTA -- Gov. William Tudor Gardiner made it clear, just minutes after taking the oath as Maine's 55th chief executive, that he expected government to be efficient.

And his idea to streamline government, put into motion before the Great Depression and approved by the people in 1931, is credited with softening the financial blow in Maine that crippled much of the nation.

"The first function of a government should be to see that its own agencies are proper and efficient -- to the end, not of much government, but of good government," said the Republican in his first inaugural.

Gardiner, just 36 when he became Maine's chief executive in January 1929, came from a long line of prominent Kennebec Valley settlers. The city of Gardiner, established in 1803, was named after his great-grandfather, Robert Hallowell Gardiner.

By all accounts, the younger Gardiner was a dashing figure -- strong, smart and bold.

He and his wife, Margaret, brought alligators, turtles, sheep, a skunk and, for a short time, a bear cub to the Blaine House, along with their four young children.

"He was perennially young, he was always very enthusiastic," said his daughter, Margaret Gardiner, 85, who lives on 300 acres of family land in Woolwich. "He was a great sportsman. He loved sailing and bird shooting."

Gardiner, who went by his middle name Tudor, served in both world wars. He was a leader who inspired the men who served with him, said Claude Berube, a professor and writer who's one chapter shy of completing a biography about Gardiner.

"He had a natural charisma that went beyond leadership," said Berube, a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. "It's not something you see very often."

Although he survived two wars and had been flying his own plane for more than a decade, Gardiner died in a plane crash in 1953 when a storm tore the wing off his plane on a flight home from a veterans reunion in Pennsylvania.

He is a fascinating former governor, the fourth in a Kennebec Journal six-part series about interesting chief executives.

EARLY YEARS

Born in 1892, Gardiner began his life surrounded by wealth as a member of the seventh generation to be brought up at Oaklands, the family mansion in Gardiner, according to "The Blaine House: Home of Maine's Governors" by H. Draper Hunt.

He attended the Groton School in Massachusetts, Harvard College and Harvard Law School, which prepared him for a job in the family law firm, according to Hunt.

He married Margaret Thomas in 1916, then enlisted as a private in the 1st Maine Heavy Field Artillery to serve in World War I.

After the war, he ran for the Maine House, and worked his way up to speaker in 1925 and 1926.

He ran for governor in 1928, defeating Democrat Edward Moran of Rockland.

"When you look at what he did, this guy was at the top of his game everywhere he went," Berube said.

He was captain of the Harvard football team and rowed on the varsity crew. He was a wrestler and boxer, and later played tennis with his wife on the Blaine House courts.

AS GOVERNOR

Gardiner's legacy as governor is tied to a major overhaul of state government, a move opposed by those in his own party, and a measure he promoted vigorously to win the support of Maine's people.

Gardiner's work to combine state agencies brings to mind the modern-day efforts of Gov. John Baldacci, who has merged two health care agencies and is seeking to save money by mandating the consolidation of local school districts and merging the state's prisons with county jails.

At the time of Gardiner's proposal, Maine wasn't the only state looking to reform government, Berube said. Gardiner consulted with Virginia's governor, who reformed his state's government after hiring a national firm.

Gardiner wanted to hire the same firm to conduct a survey of Maine government, but it cost $20,000. It was the summer of 1929, the Legislature wasn't in session, and Gardiner didn't want to take the money out of his contingency fund, Berube wrote in a paper called "The Administrative Code of 1931."

So he looked for private money and got it from the Spelman Fund, a New York charitable organization affiliated with the Rockefeller Foundation.

Legislation based on the survey results eliminated 28 boards, agencies and commissions, and replaced them with four departments. It also combined 45 independent spending agencies into one central office, which created a 10 percent savings. The House and Senate passed the code, and Gardiner signed it into law.

But the citizens wanted their say, and gathered the signatures necessary to call for a vote.

Two former Republican governors -- Percival Baxter and Ralph Owen Brewster -- announced their opposition to the law.

Gardiner took to the road.

"He campaigned in every single town in Maine," Margaret Gardiner said. "Every single one, organized or unorganized, and explained this to everybody."

Gardiner won over enough voters so the code became law.

Berube reports that it resulted in more than $640,000 in savings in the first six months, and in 1932, "Maine was one of the only states to have a balanced budget as a result of efficient cost savings measures."

Three years later, the Daily Kennebec Journal credited Gardiner's efforts with helping to ease the blow of the Depression. In a story headlined "Operation of Maine Code Was Big Help In Early Days of Depression in State," the paper wrote that the state earned "money in hard times through savings realized in the newly installed financial methods. It was a life-saver on a ship of state in distress."

Once the code became law, Gardiner did not attempt any other major policy initiatives, his daughter said. His second two-year term ended in January of 1933.

"Then he couldn't think of any more really big contributions to make," she said. "He wasn't averse to trying something else."

That something else included more war duty and a new career.

WAR SERVICE

During World War I, which preceded his time as governor, Gardiner fought in the Meuse-Argonne Campaign and spent a year in Germany after the war ended, according to Hunt.

It was during World War II that Gardiner won six medals -- and a place in the history books. Here's how the Associated Press recounted his most notable war accomplishment:

"A few hours before the Fifth Army invaded the Salerno beaches of Italy in 1943, two American officers made a daring, hazardous trip into German-held Rome and won from Italian Marshal Pietro Badoglio a pledge of loyalty to the Allies.

"They were Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, who became United Nations field commander in Korea a decade later, and Col. William Tudor Gardiner, former governor of Maine.

"In their Army uniforms, minus only caps, the two emissaries landed on the Italian coast from a British submarine, motored to Rome escorted by a worried and frightened Italian general and spent 20 nerve-wracking hours -- under the Germans' noses -- in important military discussions with the Italian high command.

"Then they flew to North Africa with information that vitally affected the entire course of World War II.

"Gardiner was then 51. The audacity of that journey, made in the full knowledge that capture meant certain execution, was typical of the tall, strapping athlete who occupied Maine's executive mansion from 1929 to 1932."

Berube, who interviewed Gardiner's driver from the North African expedition, said Gardiner didn't love war. But he understood it.

According to Berube, the driver said this about Gardiner: "There was no question what his purpose was. I loved him. I loved what he stood for."

TRAGIC DEATH

Gardiner was 61 when his Beechcraft Bonanza crashed into a game reserve 13 miles northwest of Allentown, Pa., according to a story in the Daily Kennebec Journal of Aug. 3, 1953.

He wasn't the only one killed in the crash.

Edwin S. Burt of South Portland and Edward F. Chase of Cape Elizabeth died alongside Gardiner as the men flew back from a World War I veterans reunion.

The paper reported that "rain and heavy layers of clouds" were present at the time of the crash.

When he died, Gardiner had been out of politics for 20 years and was working as an investment banker in Boston. Margaret Gardiner wishes her father had pursued his political career by running for the U.S. Senate.

But it wasn't to be.

"His mother-in-law was after him to earn some money," she said. "Being governor of Maine, he had a salary of only $5,000."

So Gardiner turned away from politics. "I think he would have loved to have been a senator," his daughter said, but he felt he needed to support his family. "He had four children to be sent off to boarding school."

Susan Cover -- 623-1056

scover@centralmaine.com