IGPA Director Emeritus Samuel K. Gove Dies at 87

The director emeritus of the University of Illinois' Institute for Government and Public Affairs is being remembered as a soft-spoken individual with a passion for government and public service.

Samuel Gove passed away died in Urbana Friday after a short illness. He was 87. Gove was with IGPA from 1950 until 1985, but was also active in government, serving on transition teams for Governors Dan Walker and Jim Edgar.

Former legislator and comptroller Dawn Clark Netsch served with Gove on the board of Illinois Issues magazine, which he founded. She said civic education for young people was really important to Gove.

"He was very determined and very insistent on that - and never forgot it, always kept coming back to it," Netsch said. "So that was another part of his character. He had not only a strong sense of what government should be, but a strong sense of how young people should be bred into it, if you will."

Netsch said Gove expressed his opinion in a quiet way.

"He was not a bombastic, flamboyant, in-your-face kind of a personality," she said. "But he had strong views on some things, and he certainly had very strong ways of expressing those."

Gove also conducted 17 statewide assemblies, one of them, in 1962, set issues for the 1970 Constitutional Convention. Robert Rich, the current director of IGPA, said Gove was "Mr. Illinois.'

No visitation or funeral services are planned. A celebration of Gove's life will be planned for a later date.