Saint Louis University Northwestern University
Where was Lester C. Hunt educated from 1913 to 1920?
Lester C . Hunt Lester Callaway Hunt , Sr . ( July 8 , 1892June 19 , 1954 ) , was an American Democratic politician from the state of Wyoming . Hunt was the first to be elected to two consecutive terms as Wyomings governor , serving as its 19th Governor from January 4 , 1943 , to January 3 , 1949 . In 1948 , he was elected by an overwhelming margin to the U.S . Senate , and began his term on January 3 , 1949 . Hunt supported a number of federal social programs and advocated for federal support of low-cost health and dental insurance policies . He also supported a variety of programs proposed by the Eisenhower administration following the Republican landslide in the 1952 elections , including the abolition of racial segregation in the District of Columbia , and the expansion of Social Security . An outspoken opponent of Senator Joseph McCarthys anti-Communist campaign , Hunt challenged McCarthy and his senatorial allies by championing a proposed law restricting Congressional immunity and allowing individuals to sue members of Congress for slanderous statements . In June 1953 , Hunts son was arrested in Washington , D.C. , on charges of soliciting sex from an undercover male police officer ( homosexual acts were prohibited by law at the time ) . Several Republican senators , including McCarthy , threatened Hunt with prosecution of his son and wide publication of the event unless he abandoned plans to run for re-election and resigned immediately , which Hunt refused to do . His son was convicted and fined on October 6 , 1953 . On April 15 , 1954 , Hunt announced his intention to run for re-election . He changed his mind , however , after McCarthy renewed the threat to use his sons arrest against him . On June 19 , 1954 , Hunt committed suicide in his Senate office ; the suicide dealt a serious blow to McCarthys image and was one of the factors that led to his censure by the Senate later in 1954 . Early years . Born in Isabel in Edgar County in eastern Illinois , Hunt visited Wyoming for the first time as a semi-professional baseball player . He graduated from Illinois Wesleyan University and then worked as a railroad switchman to put himself through dental school at Saint Louis University . After graduating in 1917 , he moved to Lander , Wyoming , and established a practice . He joined the United States Army Dental Corps when the United States entered World War I , and served as a lieutenant from 1917 to 1919 . After postgraduate study at Northwestern University in 1920 , Hunt resumed his practice in Lander . He was president of the Wyoming State Dental Society and began his career in government when appointed as president of the Wyoming State Board of Dental Examiners , serving from 1924 to 1928 . Political career . Wyoming . Hunt was elected in 1933 to the Wyoming House of Representatives from Fremont County . He sponsored eugenics legislation that would have permitted the sterilization of inmates at Wyoming institutions if afflicted with insanity , idiocy , imbecility , feeblemindedness , or epilepsy . The legislation , though similar to that enacted in several neighboring states in the 1920s , failed , and he later regretted sponsoring it . He served two four-year terms as Wyoming Secretary of State from 1935 to 1943 . In 1935 , he commissioned muralist Allen Tupper True to design the Bucking Horse and Rider that has appeared on Wyoming license plates since 1936 . While serving as Secretary of State , Hunt personally claimed the copyright of the Wyoming Guidebook , a Work Projects Administration publication , after the Governor and legislature failed to act to preserve the bucking horse and rider design as the states intellectual property . The book proved popular , and there were questions as to whether Hunt benefited personally from its sales . He was able to demonstrate that he had endorsed all quarterly royalty checks and turned them over to the state treasurer , and he transferred the copyright to the State of Wyoming in 1942 . Hunt became the first person elected to two consecutive four-year terms as governor , serving from 1943 to 1949 . He faced hostile majorities in both houses of the legislature throughout his years as governor . The principal legislative accomplishment of his first term was the enactment of a retirement system for teachers . He repeatedly proposed a retirement system for state workers in his second term without success . During his first term , Republican U.S . Senator Edward V . Robertson charged that the Japanese citizens interned at Heart Mountain , Wyoming , were leading pampered lives and hoarding supplies . The Denver Post wrote an exposé backing his complaints . Hunt dismissed that as a political story and said that food stuffs cannot be brought into a city to feed 13,500 people in a wheel barrow and it would not be good business to bring it in every day . He toured the camp and said the internees living standard was , to my way of thinking , rather disgraceful . At the end of the war he wrote to the War Relocation Authority that We do not want a single one of these evacuees to remain in Wyoming . When President Roosevelt issued an executive order on March 16 , 1943 , creating Jackson Hole National Monument , Hunt joined in mobilizing opposition and said he would use state police to remove any federal official who tried to exert authority in the Monuments lands . Congress refused to fund the Monument until 1950 , when Wyomings two U.S . Senators , Joseph C . OMahoney and Hunt , reached a compromise with the Truman administration . It merged most of the Monuments lands into Grand Teton National Park , provided compensation for lost revenue , and protected local property owners . Hunt was a Wyoming delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1940 , 1944 , and 1948 . He chaired the National Governors Association in 1948 . His official gubernatorial portrait was painted by artist Michele Rushworth and hangs in the state capitol building in Cheyenne , Wyoming . U.S . Senate election . Hunt was elected to the U.S . Senate in 1948 to a term beginning January 3 , 1949 , defeating incumbent Republican E.V . Robertson by an overwhelming margin . His political positions combined fiscal conservatism and opposition to big government with support for public housing and increased federal aid to education . During his tenure in the Senate , Hunt became a bitter enemy of Wisconsin senator Joseph R . McCarthy , and his criticism of McCarthys tactics marked him as a prime target in the 1954 election . For example , he campaigned for a law to restrict Congressional immunity by allowing individuals to sue members of Congress for slanderous statements . He called for reform of Senate rules : If situations confront the Congress in which it can no longer control its members by the rules of society , justice and fair play , then Congress has , I feel , a moral obligation to take drastic steps to remedy those situations . U.S . Senate tenure . In 1949 , he recommended that the American Medical Association ( AMA ) and the American Dental Association ( ADA ) consider endorsing a plan for the federal government to offer health insurance policies with low deductibles to cover medical , surgical , hospital , laboratory , nursing and dental services . He told an ADA convention that We cannot preserve the freedom of the practice of dentistry and medicine , we cannot keep dentistry and medicine uncontrolled and unregimented by the Federal Government , we cannot maintain our American free and independent practice in the health services by simply denouncing socialization or by a stand-pat opposition . He served on the Senate Crime Investigating Committee ( known as the Kefauver Committee ) and the Senate Armed Services Committee . He backed foreign aid programs and supported a call for disarmament designed to demonstrate that Russias peace proposals were not serious . Following Dwight Eisenhowers landslide victory in the 1952 election , Hunt announced that he felt obliged to support the administrations legislative proposals wherever possible . He cited complete agreement with plans for agricultural subsidies , the expansion of Social Security , the creation of a Fair Employment Practices Commission , and the abolition of segregation in the District of Columbia . Sons arrest and Hunts suicide . On June 9 , 1953 , Hunts 24-year-old son Lester Jr. , known as Buddy , who was a student and president of the student body at the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge , Massachusetts , was arrested in Washington , D.C. , for soliciting prostitution from a male undercover police officer in Lafayette Square , just north of and adjacent to the White House property . It was his first offense , which police normally handled quietly as a matter for the offenders family to address , but the arrest became known to Senate Republicans . According to Drew Pearsons Washington Merry-Go-Round column published after Hunts death , senators Styles Bridges and Herman Welker threatened that if Hunt did not immediately retire from the Senate and agree not to seek his seat in the 1954 election , they would see that his son was prosecuted and would widely publicize his sons arrest . In a closely divided Senate , Hunts resignation would have allowed Wyomings Republican governor to appoint a Republican to fill the remainder of Hunts term and to run as an incumbent in the 1954 election , possibly affecting the balance of power in the Senate in favor of Republicans . Hunt refused , and in response , Republican Senators threatened Inspector Roy Blick of the Morals Division of the Washington Police Department with the loss of his job for failing to prosecute Buddy Hunt . Buddy Hunt was prosecuted , and Senator Hunt attended the trial . On October 7 , 1953 , Buddy Hunt paid a fine for soliciting a plainclothes policeman for lewd and immoral purposes , and on the same day , the Washington Post published the story . Buddy Hunts attorney was quoted in an October 8 New York Times account as saying his client preferred to avoid any further publicity . Despite these brief media accounts , the arrest and prosecution of Buddy Hunt was not widely publicized at the time . In December 1953 , Hunt told journalist Pearson that he would not stand for re-election if the opposition used his sons arrest against him , fearing that the publicity would have a negative effect on his wifes health . Despite the threats of publicity from his political opponents , including a specific threat to distribute in Wyoming 25,000 leaflets about his sons arrest , Hunt did announce on April 15 , 1954 , that he would be a candidate for re-election . A poll taken on April 5 , 1954 , gave Hunt 54.5% support , with his nearest opponent at 19.3% . In May 1954 , as a member of the Senates liberal bloc , he proposed rules for Senate committees designed to eliminate some of Senator McCarthys tactics . Later that same month , Senator Bridges renewed his threat to publicize Hunt Jr.s offense to Wyoming voters . The Eisenhower administration , taking a different tack , offered Hunt a high-paying position on the U.S . Tariff Commission if he agreed never to run for the Senate again . On June 8 , 1954 , following a medical examination at Bethesda Naval Hospital , Hunt changed his mind about running again , and wrote to the chair of the Wyoming Democratic party , citing health concerns as the reason : I shall never again be a candidate for an elective office . He did not , however , resign from the Senate . On June 19 , 1954 , Senator Hunt shot himself at his desk in his Senate office , using a rifle he apparently brought from home , and died a few hours later in Casualty Hospital . The New York Times reported that he acted in apparent despondency over his health and left four sealed notes . Just one day before Hunts suicide , Senator McCarthy had accused an unnamed Senator of just plain wrong doing . After Hunts suicide , McCarthys Senate ally Karl Mundt of South Dakota denied that McCarthy was referring to Hunt . Aftermath . The day after Hunts suicide , Pearson published his charges about how Republican Senators had threatened Hunt , but described Hunts motives as complex : Two weeks ago he went to the hospital for a physical check and announced that he would not run again . It was no secret that he had been having kidney trouble for some time , but I am sure that on top of this , Lester Hunt , a much more sensitive soul than his colleagues realized , just could not bear the thought of having his sons misfortunes become the subject of whispers in his re-election campaign . In private , he confirmed that Hunt had no serious health problem and wrote in his diary that Unfortunately I am afraid that the morals charge against his son and the experience Hunt suffered was the main factor . Hunt was buried on June 22 in Cheyenne , Wyoming , at Beth El Cemetery following a brief church service in Cheyenne . At the time of his death Hunt was a major in the Army Reserve Corps . On June 24 , 1954 , acting Wyoming Governor Clifford Joy Rogers appointed Republican Edward D . Crippa to fill the remainder of Hunts Senate term . On July 4 , 1954 , the conservative Washington Times-Herald reported Buddy Hunts arrest and conviction from the previous year , with Senator Hunts death giving the story wider circulation than it had previously received . On July 9 , Blick signed an affidavit exonerating Bridges and Welker of pressuring him , but his decision to prosecute Buddy Hunt under circumstances which did not normally warrant prosecution remained unexplained . Following the election , on November 9 , 1954 , the Senate eulogized its members who had died recently and Senator Bridges called Hunt a man who demonstrated the best qualities of an American . He was loyal and he served well . Hunts cousin , William M . Spencer , president of the North American Car Corporation in Chicago , wrote Welker after learning he had eulogized Hunt : Democrat Joseph C . OMahoney won Hunts Senate seat in the November 1954 election , defeating Republican nominee William Henry Harrison III . Buddy Hunt later worked on the staff of Catholic Charities in Chicago and then for the Industrial Areas Foundation of Chicago . With his co-worker there , Nicholas von Hoffman , he co-authored a paper , The Meanings of Democracy : Puerto Rican Organizations in Chicago , that appeared in ETC. : A Review of General Semantics , an academic journal of linguistics in 1956 . In October 2015 , Buddy completed his first on-camera interview about his arrest and his fathers suicide . Buddy Hunt died in Chicago in January 2020 at the age of 92 . Later references . Allen Drury , a journalist who covered the U.S . Senate for United Press International , used Hunts blackmail and suicide as the basis for his 1959 best-selling and Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Advise and Consent . In the novel , Senator Fred Van Ackerman from Wyoming uses a homosexual affair to blackmail Utah Senator Brigham Anderson . In 1962 , the novel was made into a movie starring Henry Fonda and directed by Otto Preminger . University of Wyoming historian T.A . Larson , author of a history of the state , wrote an account of Hunts suicide and submitted it to Hunts widow Nathelle , seeking her permission to publish it . Instead she threatened him with a lawsuit and he never published the results of his research . Hunts anti-McCarthyism and his sons homosexuality are mentioned in Thomas Mallons Fellow Travelers ( 2007 ) , a novel set in the 1950s that describes a young mans introduction to hardball Washington politics as he discovers his gay identity . In 2013 , at a mock trial of Hunts Senate colleagues McCarthy , Welker , and Bridges , all three were found guilty of a variety of charges , including blackmail and causing bodily injury . Former Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal , who played the prosecuting attorney in the Cheyenne event , said : This particular part of Wyoming history had been swept under the rug . So Im really delighted to participate in drawing attention to it . The event was organized to coincide with the publication of a new study of Hunts death , Dying for Joe McCarthys Sins by Rodger McDaniel , a Presbyterian pastor , former Wyoming legislator ( 1971–1981 ) , and Democratic candidate for the U.S . Senate in 1982 . He used some of Larsons research .