Guillermo Irizarry

Agronomist Guillermo Irizarry-Rubio is the third and oldest living Secretary of State of Puerto Rico. Appointed by Governor Roberto Sánchez Vilella, he served from 1966 to January 2, 1969, when he was responsible and led the first transition team under the Puerto Rico Constitution to the opposing political party. Prior to serving as Secretary of State, which includes the role of Lieutenant Governor of Puerto Rico, Irizarry served as head of Puerto Rico's Bureau of the Budget.

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Guillermo Irizarry Rubio was born in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico on April 12, 1916. The sixth child of a printer, he started working early on on his father's business. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from the Recinto Universitario de Mayagüez de la Universidad de Puerto Rico (the UPR - Mayagüez Campus) in May, 1939 with a degree in Agronomy. Puerto Rico was still undergoing significant economic hardship, the result of Hurricane San Felipe in 1928. It is in June 1939 that at the request of Carlos Esteva, then Director of the Tobacco Institute, he has is first official job at an experimental station that had been recently established in Puerto Rico. Employment opportunities were still difficult, but some jobs were by then being created on the Island as a result of Luis Muñoz Marín's initiative for Puerto Rico, which joined in the type of social programs that President F. D. Roosevelt had implemented in the United States.

Guillermo Irizarry served in the United States Army during World War II, was commissioned as a second lieutenant and left the army as captain. Irizarry had a 1A classification, which meant under the military categories, that he could be called for active military service immediately. By 1943, Irizarry had officially joined the United States military where he continued serving until July, 1946. After his military service Irizarry offered guidance in the Veterans Administration, but a fortunate meeting with the then Secretary of Business and Agriculture, Ramón Colón Torres, leads to him completing a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Louisiana in 1950 and rejoining the Agriculture Department of Puerto Rico that same year. On behalf of the Puerto Rico Industrial Development Company, he participated in the process that lead Harold Toppel and brother George Toppel to establish the first supermarket in Puerto Rico, Pueblo.

In 1960 he was named the Director of the Office of Management and Budget of the Government of Puerto Rico, where he continued to serve past the end of the term of then Governor Muñoz on January 2, 1965, and until December, 1966 when then Governor Roberto Sánchez Vilella nominated him to become Secretary of State of Puerto Rico. It was as Secretary of State of Puerto Rico that he represented the People of Puerto Rico at Martin Luther King's wake.

He served as Secretary of State, and provided needed stability to the government of Puerto Rico, during one of Puerto Rico's most tumultuous times. During his term, Gov. Sánchez Vilella's relationship with his predecessor and first elected governor, Luis Muñoz Marín, deteriorated almost as rapidly as the governor's marriage to the First Lady, which ended in the first divorce of a sitting governor and remarriage to the governor's chief of staff. Politically, the governor abandoned the party that elected him, the Popular Democratic Party of Puerto Rico (PDP), and joined a newly founded party, the People's Party, which nominated him for an unsuccessful reelection bid. In November of that year, the PDP suffered its first defeat with the election of the New Progressive Party's Luis A. Ferré. As a result, Secretary Irizarry presided over the first transition between elected governors of different parties.

From 1973 to 1977, during the administration of Governor Rafael Hernández Colón, Irizarry served again the People of Puerto Rico as a member of the Higher Education Counsel. Within the education arena he also served as the first President of the General Education Counsel from 1985 until 1990.

At the age of 100, in 2016 he is the oldest living former Secretary of State.