Background
McKinney was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and raised in Connecticut.
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McKinney was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and raised in Connecticut.
He attended Kent School and later Princeton University from 1949 to 1951, but dropped out and enlisted in the United States Air Force.
In 1987. McKinney then returned to college, and received a Bachelor of Arts from Yale University in 1958. He raced cars and was involved in several car-related businesses, including Auto Interior Decorators, Incorporated. and Fairfield Firestone, and was President of a chain of tire stores called CMF Tires. He also owned Lantern Point Real Estate Development and other ventures.
In 1966, McKinney was elected as a Republican to the Connecticut State House of Representatives, where he served two 2-year terms, 1967-1971.
He was Minority Leader in his second term. He served in the House as a moderate Republican until his death in Washington, District of Columbia. He is widely known for the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Acting of 1986, which provides federal money for shelter programs.
McKinney served on the Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs Committee and is credited with coining the phrase "too big to fail" in connection with large banks. In Congress, he served on the House Select Committee on Assassinations.
During this time, he also served as a director of Bridgeport Hospital.
McKinney was a resident of Greens Farms, which is a part of Westport, Connecticut. His death in 1987 was brought about by complications of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. His physician speculated that McKinney became infected with Human Immunodeficiency Virus in 1979 as the result of blood transfusions during heart surgery. Antigay prejudice at the time of McKinney"s death in 1987 may have promoted a disingenuous approach to speculations on the cause of McKinney"s Human Immunodeficiency Virus infection.
Arnold Denson, the man with whom McKinney had been living in Washington, and to whom McKinney left property in his will, said that he had been McKinney"s lover, and that he believed McKinney was already infected when Denson met him.
After his death, Congress renamed the Salt Meadow National Wildlife Refuge in Connecticut the Stewart B. McKinney National Wildlife Refuge. They had five children -- Stewart Junior.
(b June 7, 1957), Lucie (b June 8, 1958), Jean, Elizabeth (b October 15, 1960), and John (b March 6, 1964). John McKinney was minority leader of the Connecticut State Senate until the end of 2014, and was an unsuccessful candidate for the Republican nomination for Governor in the 2014 elections.
