William Arthur Strauss, 60, who created two Washington institutions – the Capitol Steps, and the Critics and Awards Program for High School Theater – died Dec. 18. He had pancreatic cancer.

He was born Feb. 5, 1947, in Chicago, and spent most of his childhood in Burlingame, Calif., in the San Francisco Bay area. He was a Capitol page in 1963 during his junior year in high school. He went on to graduate from Burlingame High School in 1964, Harvard College in 1969, Harvard Law School in 1973 and the Kennedy School of Government, also in 1973.

While in college, Mr. Strauss founded and ran FOCUS, a nearly nationwide program to integrate colleges and provide college opportunities to low-income minority youth.

He decided early on that he did not want to pursue a traditional law degree. The same summer his law school colleagues were taking the bar exam, he took a 40-day honeymoon trip across Africa with his new bride, Janie Strauss. They moved to Washington, D.C., in 1973 and eventually settled in McLean.

The same year Mr. Strauss took a position as a top policy aide to a senior official at the former U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (now the Department of Health and Human Services).

In 1974, Mr. Strauss moved to the Presidential Clemency Board, where he directed a research team tasked with writing a report on the impact of the Vietnam War on the draft-eligible generation.

A year later, he published a book with Larry Baskir, “Chance and Circumstance” (1978), which remains the definitive work on Vietnam War-era draft and military policies. Their second book, “Reconciliation After Vietnam” (1978), became a blueprint for President Jimmy Carter’s pardon of draft resistors.

After a two-year stint at the U.S. Department of Energy (1977-79) amid times of gas-line shortages, Mr. Strauss was offered the job of general counsel at the Selective Service. This position was blocked because of political objections to his admission, in the preface in “Chance and Circumstance,” that he helped a classmate eat enough to be too heavy for the draft.

Mr. Strauss may have been the first boomer to be denied a high-level federal job because of ’60s misbehavior – in his case, high-cholesterol cooking – but it turned out to be a big lucky break.

The same day he learned of his rejection, he discovered a job opening with Sen. Charles Percy (R-Ill.) on one of his committee staffs. A year later, in 1980, when the Senate went Republican, Mr. Strauss became chief counsel and staff director of the Subcommittee of Energy, Nuclear Proliferation, and Government Processes.

On Memorial Day 1981, he hosted a party at his house that ended with a jam session, writing parodies about political issues of the time. Over the next several months, he wrote a series of parodies and discovered that others in the office had musical talents, too.

They all decided to put on a show at Sen. Percy’s Christmas Party in December 1981. They called themselves the Capitol Steps as a jibe at how a South Carolina congressman and his wife had recently shared a marital moment “on the Capitol steps.”

Over the next four years while Sen. Percy was in office, The Capitol Steps was a nonprofit charity, performing a show or two a week.

When Sen. Percy lost his re-election bid in 1984, Mr. Strauss decided to try to make The Capitol Steps commercially successful. Meanwhile, he started writing on issues related to generations that had interested him, dating back to his initial books on the Vietnam Draft.

In the late 1980s, Mr. Strauss developed and perfected the backwards talk routine “Lirty Dies” for which he is best known. From Iran-Contra and Dan Quayle to Monica Lewinski and George W. Bush, there was plenty of comedic fodder, and business was good for The Capitol Steps. Strauss also wrote two satirical books with Elaina Newport: “Fools on the Hill” (1992) and “Sixteen Scandals” (2002).

Starting in 1987, Mr. Strauss and Neil Howe set about writing “Generations” (1991, a complete history of America through a series of complete generational biographies). In the 1990s and 2000s, with Mr. Howe, he also published “13th-Gen” (1993, the first book about Generation-X), “The Fourth Turning” (TK, about the cycles of history), “Millennials Rising” (1999, the first book about the Millennial Generation), “Millennials and the Pop Culture” (2005), and “Millennials Go to College” (first edition 2003, second edition 2007).

Mr. Howe and Mr. Strauss have published numerous articles and given a great many speeches on their generational theories.

Mr. Strauss was diagnosed with a particularly lethal and aggressive form of pancreatic cancer in the summer of 1999. After surgery, he learned that he had an unusual, semi-survivable form of the disease called islet-cell neuroendocrine pancreatic cancer.

Two months before receiving these diagnoses, Mr. Strauss had an idea, inspired in part by the Columbine tragedy, to start a program called The Cappies (CAP= Critic and Awards Program), in which high school students attend and review each other’s shows and have top reviews published in local newspapers. The critics serve as awards judges, determining who deserves nominations and awards in 37 categories.

Upon diagnosis, Mr. Strauss made the pledge to shift his personal priority to build The Cappies into a most robust, successful program, realizing that he would have to do so while coping with his disease. With the help of Judy Bowns, Mr. Strauss was able to build a program that, in its first year, included 23 Washington-area schools and finished with a gala awards ceremony at Hayfield Secondary.

The next year, the program grew to 34 schools and held its gala at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. In the years since, in between Mr. Strauss’ treatments, he helped create 16 other Cappies programs (including two in Canada) and Cappies International Theater. The latter is a summer program through which top Cappies winners from across North America gather into one performing company and put on shows at the Kennedy Center.

He also oversaw the writing of two full-length musicals by student creative teams. The most recent musical, “Senioritis,” has been made into a movie, which will be released in March 2008.

Along the way, Mr. Strauss wrote the book and lyrics for three musicals: “Makiddo,” “Free-The-Music.com” and “Anasazi.”

Mr. Strauss is survived by his wife Janie; three daughters, Melanie Yee, Victoria Hays and Becky Strauss; and a son, Eric Strauss.

This information is provided by Victoria S. Hays, national program manager, Critics and Awards Program for High School Theater.