Gerald Nye
Gerald Prentice Nye (December 19, 1892 – July 17, 1971) was an American politician who represented North Dakota in the United States Senate from 1925 to 1945. He was a Republican and supporter of World War II-era isolationism, chairing the Nye Committee which studied the causes of United States' involvement in World War I. Early life. Gerald Nye (whose first name was pronounced with a hard "G") was born in Hortonville, Wisconsin, the son of Phoebe Ella (née Prentice) and Irwin Raymond Nye. Both of his grandfathers had served in the Civil War: Freeman James Nye in the  43rd Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment and George Washington Prentice in the 3rd Wisconsin Volunteer Cavalry Regiment. He was the first of four children. In his first year, he and his parents moved to Wittenberg, Wisconsin, where his father became owner and editor of a small newspaper. Three more children were born there: Clair Irwin, Donald Oscar, and Marjorie Ella. Nye's father was a staunch supporter of Progressive Robert M. La Follette, and Nye personally remembered his father's taking him to hear Senator La Follette speak and then meet the Senator afterwards. (Years later, Gerald Nye and Robert M.  La Follette Jr. would serve in the U.S. Senate together.) His uncle, Wallace G. Nye, was Mayor of Minneapolis, Minnesota when Gerald was in his teens. His mother, Ella, had been diagnosed with tuberculosis. Family history indicates that she may have been asthmatic. She made trips to the South for recuperation, but on October 19, 1906 she died. He was thirteen; his brothers, ten and eight; and his baby sister, six. He was comforted by the presence of his four grandparents at the funeral. Nye graduated from Wittenberg High School in 1911, at age 18, and moved back to his  grandparents' town of Hortonville, Wisconsin. Newspaper years. Gerald and his brother Clair had grown up helping around their father's newspaper business and learned the trade. Gerald took the editing end and Clair operated the presses. In 1911, after graduation, Nye became editor of "The Hortonville Review". Three years later, he was the editor of the "Creston Daily Plain Dealer" in Iowa. In May 1916, he bought a weekly paper in Fryburg, North Dakota, "The Fryburg Pioneer". Political years. Nye was a supporter of the agrarian reform movement. His editorials lambasted big government and big business. He took the side  of the struggling farmers. In 1924, Nye unsuccessfully sought election as a progressive Republican to the U.S. House. When U.S. Senator Edwin F. Ladd died on June 22, 1925, he and others gathered in the office of North Dakota Governor Arthur G. Sorlie. The appointment caused controversy as it was unclear that the North Dakota Legislature had given authority to the Governor to make the Senate appointment, a point made by conservative Republicans who were worried about weakening their caucus with the more progressive Nye. Nye and his young family moved to Washington in December 1925, but because of the  above controversy he was not seated in the Senate until January 1926. Nye's youth and lack of sophistication were the talk of the town. He had a bowl haircut that was ridiculed. Nevertheless, he became a very active, popular and outspoken Senator, and North Dakotans elected him to three full terms in 1926, 1932, and 1938.