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Edgar D. Whitcomb, a Former Indiana Governor, Dies at 98

Edgar Whitcomb is sworn in as Indiana Secretary of State in 1966.Credit...Nick Longworth/The Indianapolis Star, via Associated Press

Edgar D. Whitcomb, a former governor of Indiana who escaped from a Japanese prisoner camp in World War II and who made an around-the-world solo sailing trip while in his 70s, died on Thursday at his home near Rome, Ind. He was 98.

His daughter Patricia Whitcomb confirmed his death.

Mr. Whitcomb, a Republican and a former small-town lawyer, served from 1969 to 1973, a time of continuing disputes over spending and taxes. He took a strict stance against any tax increases and was quick to veto legislation, even though the legislature was controlled by his fellow Republicans.

Among the scores of bills he vetoed was a plan, in 1971, backed by the House speaker, Otis R. Bowen, to cut property taxes by increasing the state sales tax.

Mr. Whitcomb had won the Republican nomination for governor in 1968 over Mr. Bowen. Mr. Bowen went on to win election as governor in 1972 and push a similar property tax plan through the legislature the next year.

Mr. Whitcomb helped ensure decades of Republican dominance in Indianapolis by signing into law a government unification of the city with its Republican-leaning suburbs in Marion County.

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Former Gov. Edgar D. Whitcomb of Indiana outside his home in 2010, with a photo of himself from World War II.Credit...Kelly Wilkinson/The Indianapolis Star, via Associated Press

Edgar Doud Whitcomb was born on Nov. 6, 1917, in Hayden, Ind. He was a student at Indiana University before enlisting in the Army Air Corps in 1940, becoming a navigator for B-17 bombers stationed in the Philippines.

He was among several thousand troops captured and imprisoned on the small island of Corregidor, from which he and another American escaped by swimming overnight more than two miles to Bataan, only to be recaptured days later. He wrote about the episode in a memoir, “Escape From Corregidor,” published in 1958.

After the war, he earned his law degree at Indiana University and practiced law in southern Indiana. He ran unsuccessfully for the United States House of Representatives in 1954 and for the Senate in 1964 before being elected Indiana secretary of state in 1966.

In 1976, he sought the Republican nomination for United States senator but lost to Richard G. Lugar, who went on to defeat the incumbent Democrat, Vance Hartke, in the general election.

Mr. Whitcomb and his wife, Patricia, divorced in 1987 after 36 years of marriage. That same year, he began a quest to sail solo around the world. He completed the trip in stages over the years in his 30-foot sailboat. In 1996, it sank after striking a shallow coral reef off Egypt.

In his 80s, Mr. Whitcomb moved to an isolated cabin, with a battery as its only electrical source, on 140 acres of forest along the Ohio River. He lived there for several years with Mary Evelyn Gayer before they married in 2013, when he was 95 and she was 83. She survives him, as do several children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

The New York Times contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 20 of the New York edition with the headline: Edgar Whitcomb, 98, P.O.W. and Governor. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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