G. William Whitehurst

George William Whitehurst was born in Norfolk, Virginia, on 12 March 1925, to Calvert Stanhope Whitehurst and the former Laura Virginia Tomlinson. He attended Norfolk public schools and graduated from Matthew Fontaine Maury High School in 1942.

From 1943 to 1946 he served in the United States Navy, chiefly as an aviation radioman in the Pacific Theater. Among his papers at Old Dominion University is a log book from bombing runs over Japan during the Second World War.

After the war he studied history at Washington and Lee University, where he joined the Delta Upsilon fraternity, graduating in 1950. He earned a master's degree in history from the University of Virginia in 1951 and a PhD in American diplomatic history from West Virginia University in 1962.

Whitehurst joined the history faculty of the Norfolk Division of the College of William and Mary in 1950 and was there when it became the independent Old Dominion College in 1962. He served as dean of students from 1963 to 1968 and from 1962 to 1968 was also a news analyst for WTAR-TV in Norfolk.

In 1968 he was elected to the US House of Representatives as a Republican from Virginia's 2nd district, based in Hampton Roads, defeating Democrat Frederick T. Stant with 54 percent of the vote. He was the first Republican to represent the area since the Great Depression. He called himself a moderate conservative: he voted for the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972, the Equal Rights Amendment and the 1970 extension of the Voting Rights Act, while opposing abortion. He served mainly on the House Armed Services Committee, as well as six years on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, two years on the Ethics Committee, and as a delegate to the North Atlantic Assembly.

He won re-election eight times, holding the seat with almost 60 percent even in the Watergate year of 1974, and was unopposed in 1978, 1982 and 1984. He published two volumes of Diary of a Congressman in 1983 and 1985 and did not seek a tenth term in 1986, leaving the House in January 1987.

He then returned to Old Dominion University as the Kaufman Lecturer in Public Affairs, teaching political science and political history. Known on campus as Dr. Bill, he was a widely popular teacher and estimated that he taught 12,000 students before retiring in May 2020 at the age of 95. He also served for many years as a political analyst for WTKR in Norfolk.

Whitehurst married Jennette Seymour Franks on 24 August 1946 in Plymouth, Massachusetts. They had a daughter, Frances, and a son, Cal. Jennette Whitehurst died on 6 March 2009.

He lived in Norfolk all his life. In October 2016 he was among former Republican members of Congress who signed a letter opposing Donald Trump's presidential candidacy, and in August 2020 he was one of 24 former Republican lawmakers who endorsed Joe Biden.

G. William Whitehurst died in Norfolk, Virginia, on 7 November 2026, aged 101. No cause of death was given in his published obituary. He had become the oldest living former US representative in June 2026 on the death of Frank J. Guarini of New Jersey, and the distinction passed to Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland.

A funeral service was scheduled for 2pm on Saturday 14 November 2026, arranged by H.D. Oliver Funeral Apartments in Norfolk.

Whitehurst's 18 years in Congress made him one of the longest serving Republicans in Virginia's House delegation of his era, and his career at Old Dominion University spanned seven decades, from the Norfolk Division of William and Mary to the modern university. Old Dominion renamed a residence hall Whitehurst Hall in his honour in 1997 and holds his papers, including his congressional diaries, campaign scrapbooks and wartime records. In 2020, as he retired, he praised his students while lamenting the bitterness he saw in Washington.