William Proxmire, Senator Who Abhored Waste, Dies

William Proxmire of Wisconsin, the longtime gadfly of the United States Senate who thrived on exposing frivolous federal spending and dispensed Golden Fleece Awards to spotlight what he considered bad uses of taxpayers' money, died today at a nursing home in Sykesville, Md. He was 90 and had remained a resident of the Washington metropolitan area after he announced in 1987 that he would not seek re-election, ending a colorful Senate career of 31 years.

Mr. Proxmire, who was also remembered for his championing of regimens of daily exercise (in his prime, he jogged nearly 10 miles a day) and spartan diet, learned he had Alzheimer's disease in 1995 and made it public three years later. A man who was proud of his keen intellect, it was a disease he feared and perhaps had a premonition about: in 1987 The Chicago Tribune reported that shortly before he retired, a full eight years before he received his diagnosis, he asked the Senate doctor what his odds were of living to the age of 80 without getting Alzheimer's disease, which is a degenerative disorder of the brain .The disease did not run in his family but he was worried about it. He said more than once that he did not want to be a senator if his intellect was for any reason diminished. He thought he could see the infirmities of old age on the horizon when he said he would not run again.

Mr. Proxmire, a Democrat, was first elected in 1957 to fill the unexpired term of the late Joseph R. McCarthy, the Republican who was censured for reckless attacks on those he accused of being communists or fellow travelers. McCarthy's successor could not have provided more of a contrast.

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