JD Vance, Middletown High School Graduate, Elected Vice President
JD Vance, a 2003 graduate of Middletown High School, is set to become America’s next vice president.
The U.S. Senator was born in Middletown in 1984 as James Donald Bowman. During his time as a Middie, Vance went by the name James Hamel, taking his stepfather’s last name.
While at Middletown High School, Vance was elected vice president of his senior class.
After graduating from high school, Vance joined the United States Marines Corps and served as a public affairs marine in Iraq. He then attended Ohio State University, graduating in 2009. He graduated from Yale Law School in 2013.
Vance rose to national prominence in 2016 with the publication of his best-selling memoir "Hillbilly Elegy," which was adapted into a Netflix film in 2020.
He was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2022 and began representing the State of Ohio in January 2023.
VP-Elect Vance Facts:
- Vance will become the third-youngest vice president. (He is the youngest since 1953, when Richard M. Nixon, who celebrated his 40th birthday just days before the inauguration, was sworn in as Dwight D. Eisenhower’s vice president. John C. Breckinridge, who was 36 when he assumed office in 1857 as James Buchanan’s vice president, holds the record for the nation’s youngest vice president.)
- He will be the first millennial vice president
- He will be the first vice president to have served in the Marine Corps
Ohio VP Facts:
Before Vance, the last Ohio-born vice president was Charles Dawes, from Marietta, who served from 1925 to 1929 under President Calvin Coolidge. Before that, there was Charles Fairbanks from Unionville Center, who served from 1905 to 1909, under President Theodore Roosevelt, and Thomas Hendricks from Fultonham, who served in 1885, under President Grover Cleveland from March until his death in November.
While Dawes, Fairbanks, and Hendricks were all born in Ohio, they built their political careers elsewhere before becoming vice president.
Ohio President Facts:
Ohio is sometimes referred to as the "Mother of Presidents" since seven U.S. presidents were born there:
- Ulysses S. Grant: Born in Point Pleasant
- Rutherford Birchard Hayes: Born in Delaware
- James Abram Garfield: Born in Orange Township, now Moreland Hills
- Benjamin Harrison: Born in North Bend
- William McKinley: Born in Niles
- William Howard Taft: Born in Cincinnati
- Warren Gamaliel Harding: Born in Corsica, now Blooming Grove
- William Henry Harrison: Born in Virginia, but settled in Ohio
