Some people leave an immensely greater mark on a nation’s history than the bulk of the public ever recognizes. Bill Brock, the former U.S. representative, senator, Cabinet member, and Republican National Committee chairman who died on March 25 at age 90, was certainly in that elite category.

By the standards of the 1970s, when his influence was greatest, Brock was a centrist conservative, acceptable but not entirely part of either camp of the Republican divide between short-term president Gerald Ford and California ex-Gov. Ronald Reagan. When Ford was considering various people to serve as his vice president, Reagan sent word that Brock was among a short list acceptable to him. Yet, later, Reagan and Brock would be at loggerheads as Brock essentially opposed Reagan’s four-year drive for the 1980 Republican presidential nomination.