Lester C. Hunt
Encyclopedia
Lester Callaway Hunt was a Democratic
politician and dentist from the state of Wyoming. He served as the 19th Governor of Wyoming from 1943 to 1949 and as United States Senator from January 3, 1949 until his suicide
on June 19, 1954.
, Illinois
. He visited Wyoming for the first time as semi-professional baseball player. He graduated from Wesleyan University
and then worked as a railroad switchman to put himself through dental school at St. Louis University. After graduating from dental school in 1917, he moved to Lander, Wyoming
and established a dental practice. He joined the United States Army Dental Corps when the United States entered World War I
, serving from 1917 to 1919 as a lieutenant. After postgraduate study at Northwestern
in 1920, Hunt resumed his practice in Lander. He was president of the Wyoming State Dental Society and began his career in government as president of the Wyoming State Board of Dental Examiners from 1924 to 1928.
from Fremont County in 1933. He served two four-year terms as Wyoming Secretary of State from 1935 to 1943. He commissioned muralist Allen Tupper True
to design the Bucking Horse and Rider
that has appeared on Wyoming license plates since that time. While serving as Secretary of State, Hunt personally claimed the copyright in the Wyoming Guidebook, a Works Project Administration publication, after the Governor and legislature failed to act to preserve Wyoming's intellectual property. Hunt endorsed all quarterly royalty checks of $3.50 and turned them over to the state treasurer.
He became the first person elected to 2 consecutive 4-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 expose 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 Monument's lands. Congress refused to fund the Monument until 1950, when Wyoming's two U.S. Senators, Joseph C. O'Mahoney
and Hunt, reached a compromise with the Truman administration. It merged most of the Monument's 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.
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 McCarthy's 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."
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, the Senate Armed Services Committee. He backed foreign aid programs and supported a call for disarmament designed to demonstrate that Russia's peace proposals were not serious.
Following Eisenhower's 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.
, was arrested for soliciting prostitution from a male undercover police officer in Lafayette Square
. It was his first offense, which police normally handled quietly as a matter for the offender's family to address. According to Drew Pearson
's Washington Merry-Go-Round column published months later, Republican Senators Styles Bridges
, chairman of the Republican Campaign Committee, and Herman Welker
had threatened Hunt that if he 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 son's arrest. Hunt took no action. On July 3, the conservative Washington Times-Herald
reported the arrest. The 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 Hunt Jr. Hunt's son was prosecuted, and Senator Hunt attended the trial. On October 7, 1953, Hunt Jr. paid a fine for soliciting a plainclothes policeman "for lewd and immoral purposes." His attorney wanted to appeal but said his client preferred "to avoid any further publicity." Hunt's resignation would have allowed Wyoming's Republican governor to appoint a Republican to fill the remainder of Hunt's term and to run as an incumbent in the 1954 election.
In December 1953 Hunt told journalist Pearson that he would not stand for re-election if the opposition used his son's arrest against him, but he feared publicity about the threats against him as well, believing that his wife could not bear it. Hunt announced his intention to run for re-election on April 15, 1954. A poll taken on April 5, 1954, gave Hunt 54.5% of the vote, with the nearest opponent at 19.3%. In May 1954, as a member of the Senate's "liberal bloc," he proposed rules for Senate committees designed to eliminate some of Senator McCarthy's tactics. At the end of the month, Senator Bridges renewed his threat to publicize Hunt Jr.'s offense to Wyoming voters. On June 8, 1954, following medical examinations at Bethesda Naval Hospital
, Hunt wrote to the chair of the Wyoming Democratic party, citing health concerns: "I shall never again be a candidate for an elective office." He did not resign from the Senate.
On June 19, he 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 Hunt's suicide, Senator McCarthy had accused an unnamed Senator of "just plain wrong doing". After Hunt's suicide, McCarthy's Senate ally, Karl Mundt of South Dakota denied that McCarthy was referring to Hunt.
The day after Hunt's suicide, Pearson published his charges about how Republican Senators had threatened Hunt, but described Hunt's 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 son's 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."
He was buried on June 22 in Beth El Cemetery following a brief church service in Cheyenne, Wyoming. At the time of his death Hunt was a major in the Reserve Corps.
On June 24, 1954, Wyoming Governor Clifford Joy Rogers
appointed Republican Edward D. Crippa
to fill the remainder of Hunt's Senate term. Democrat Joseph C. O'Mahoney
won the seat in the November 1954 election.
On July 9, Blick signed an affidavit exonerating Bridges and Welker of pressuring him, but his decision to prosecute Hunt Jr. remained unexplained. Following the election, on November 9, 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." Hunt's cousin, William M. Spencer, president of the North American Car Corporation in Chicago, wrote Welker after learning he had eulogized Hunt:
Lester C Hunt, Jr. 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.
used Hunt's 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
.
Hunt's anti-McCarthyism and his son's homosexuality are mentioned in Thomas Mallon
's Fellow Travelers (2007), a novel set in the 1950s that describes a young man's introduction to hardball Washington politics as he discovers his gay identity.
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
politician and dentist from the state of Wyoming. He served as the 19th Governor of Wyoming from 1943 to 1949 and as United States Senator from January 3, 1949 until his suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
on June 19, 1954.
Early years
Hunt was born in IsabelIsabel, Illinois
Isabel is an unincorporated town in Embarrass Township, Edgar County, Illinois, USA.-Geography:Isabel is located at at an elevation of 669 feet. It is less than a mile west of the small town of Borton....
, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
. He visited Wyoming for the first time as semi-professional baseball player. He graduated from Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University is a private liberal arts college founded in 1831 and located in Middletown, Connecticut. According to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Wesleyan is the only Baccalaureate College in the nation that emphasizes undergraduate instruction in the arts and...
and then worked as a railroad switchman to put himself through dental school at St. Louis University. After graduating from dental school in 1917, he moved to Lander, Wyoming
Lander, Wyoming
Lander is a city in, and the county seat of, Fremont County, Wyoming, United States. Named for transcontinental explorer Frederick W. Lander, Lander is located in central Wyoming, along the Middle Fork of the Popo Agie River. A tourism center with several dude ranches nearby, Lander is located just...
and established a dental practice. He joined the United States Army Dental Corps when the United States entered World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, serving from 1917 to 1919 as a lieutenant. After postgraduate study at Northwestern
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....
in 1920, Hunt resumed his practice in Lander. He was president of the Wyoming State Dental Society and began his career in government as president of the Wyoming State Board of Dental Examiners from 1924 to 1928.
Political career
Hunt was elected to the Wyoming House of RepresentativesWyoming House of Representatives
The Wyoming House of Representatives is the lower house of the Wyoming State Legislature. There are 60 Representatives in the House, representing an equal amount of single-member constituent districts across the state, each with a population of at least 9,000. The House convenes at the Wyoming...
from Fremont County in 1933. He served two four-year terms as Wyoming Secretary of State from 1935 to 1943. He commissioned muralist Allen Tupper True
Allen Tupper True
Allen Tupper True was an American illustrator, easel painter and muralist who specialized in depicting the American West.-Biography:...
to design the Bucking Horse and Rider
Bucking Horse and Rider
The Bucking Horse and Rider is a registered trademark of the State of Wyoming. Wyoming trademarked the image for the state's license plates in 1936. However, the state's usage of the logo is traced back to as early as 1918. Wyoming is popularly known as the "Cowboy State," in part because of the...
that has appeared on Wyoming license plates since that time. While serving as Secretary of State, Hunt personally claimed the copyright in the Wyoming Guidebook, a Works Project Administration publication, after the Governor and legislature failed to act to preserve Wyoming's intellectual property. Hunt endorsed all quarterly royalty checks of $3.50 and turned them over to the state treasurer.
He became the first person elected to 2 consecutive 4-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
Edward V. Robertson
Edward Vivian Robertson was a United States Senator from Wyoming.Born in Cardiff, Wales, he served in the Third Battalion of the Welsh Regiment during the Second Boer War from 1899 to 1902. He then engaged in mechanical and electric power engineering from 1902 to 1912. Robertson emigrated to the...
charged that the Japanese citizens interned at Heart Mountain, Wyoming, were leading pampered lives and hoarding supplies. The Denver Post wrote an expose 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
War Relocation Authority
The War Relocation Authority was a United States government agency established to handle internment of Japanese-, German-, and Italian-Americans during World War II...
that "We do not want a single one of these evacuees to remain in Wyoming."
When President Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
issued an executive order on March 16, 1943, creating Jackson Hole National Monument
Jackson Hole National Monument
Jackson Hole National Monument was a wildlife reserve in Jackson Hole, the majority of which is now a part of Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, United States. It was created by executive order by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1943, and met with considerable opposition from Wyoming legislators....
, Hunt joined in mobilizing opposition and said he would use state police to remove any federal official who tried to exert authority in the Monument's lands. Congress refused to fund the Monument until 1950, when Wyoming's two U.S. Senators, Joseph C. O'Mahoney
Joseph C. O'Mahoney
Joseph Christopher O'Mahoney was a Democratic United States Senator from Wyoming.O'Mahoney was born in Chelsea, Suffolk County, Massachusetts, November 5, 1884. He attended the parochial and public schools and Columbia University, New York City...
and Hunt, reached a compromise with the Truman administration. It merged most of the Monument's lands into Grand Teton National Park
Grand Teton National Park
Grand Teton National Park is a United States National Park located in northwestern Wyoming, U.S. The Park consists of approximately and includes the major peaks of the long Teton Range as well as most of the northern sections of the valley known as Jackson Hole. Only south of Yellowstone...
, 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
National Governors Association
The National Governors Association , founded in 1908 as the National Governors' Conference, is funded primarily by state dues, federal grants and contracts and private contributions. NGA represents the governors of the fifty U.S. states and five U.S. territories The National Governors Association...
in 1948.
Hunt was elected to the U.S. Senate
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
in 1948 to a term beginning January 3, 1949, defeating incumbent Republican E.V. Robertson
Edward V. Robertson
Edward Vivian Robertson was a United States Senator from Wyoming.Born in Cardiff, Wales, he served in the Third Battalion of the Welsh Regiment during the Second Boer War from 1899 to 1902. He then engaged in mechanical and electric power engineering from 1902 to 1912. Robertson emigrated to the...
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 McCarthy's tactics marked him as a prime target in the 1954 election. For example, he campaigned for a law to restrict Congressional immunity
Speech or Debate Clause
The Speech or Debate Clause is a clause in the United States Constitution . The clause states that members of both Houses of Congress...
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."
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, the Senate Armed Services Committee. He backed foreign aid programs and supported a call for disarmament designed to demonstrate that Russia's peace proposals were not serious.
Following Eisenhower's 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
Fair Employment Practices Commission
The Fair Employment Practices Commission implemented US Executive Order 8802, requiring that companies with government contracts not to discriminate on the basis of race or religion. It was intended to help African Americans and other minorities obtain jobs in the homefront industry...
, and the abolition of segregation in the District of Columbia.
Son's arrest and Hunt's suicide
On June 9, 1953, Hunt's 20-year-old son and namesake, president of the student body at the Episcopal Theological School in CambridgeEpiscopal Divinity School
The Episcopal Divinity School is a seminary of the Episcopal Church based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Known throughout the Anglican Communion for prophetic teaching and action on issues of civil rights and social justice, its faculty and students have been directly involved in many of the social...
, was arrested for soliciting prostitution from a male undercover police officer in Lafayette Square
President's Park
President's Park, located in Washington, D.C., encompasses the White House, a visitor center, Lafayette Square, and The Ellipse. President's Park was the original name of Lafayette Square. The current President's Park is administered by the National Park Service.-White House:Washington, D.C...
. It was his first offense, which police normally handled quietly as a matter for the offender's family to address. According to Drew Pearson
Drew Pearson (journalist)
Andrew Russell Pearson , known professionally as Drew Pearson, was one of the best-known American columnists of his day, noted for his muckraking syndicated newspaper column "Washington Merry-Go-Round," in which he attacked various public persons, sometimes with little or no objective proof for his...
's Washington Merry-Go-Round column published months later, Republican Senators Styles Bridges
Styles Bridges
Henry Styles Bridges was an American teacher, editor, and Republican Party politician from Concord, New Hampshire. He served one term as 63rd Governor of New Hampshire before a twenty-four year career in the United States Senate.Bridges was born in West Pembroke, Maine. He attended the public...
, chairman of the Republican Campaign Committee, and Herman Welker
Herman Welker
Herman Welker was a politician from the state of Idaho. He was a member of the Idaho Republican Party.Welker was born in Cambridge, Idaho. He was the youngest of seven children of John and Zelda Welker, who had moved from North Carolina and started a potato farm. He is the grandson of of North...
had threatened Hunt that if he 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 son's arrest. Hunt took no action. On July 3, the conservative Washington Times-Herald
Washington Times-Herald
The Washington Times-Herald was an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C.. It was created by Cissy Patterson, when she bought the Herald and the Times from William Randolph Hearst, and merged them. The result was a '24 hour' newspaper, with 10 editions per day, from morning to...
reported the arrest. The 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 Hunt Jr. Hunt's son was prosecuted, and Senator Hunt attended the trial. On October 7, 1953, Hunt Jr. paid a fine for soliciting a plainclothes policeman "for lewd and immoral purposes." His attorney wanted to appeal but said his client preferred "to avoid any further publicity." Hunt's resignation would have allowed Wyoming's Republican governor to appoint a Republican to fill the remainder of Hunt's term and to run as an incumbent in the 1954 election.
In December 1953 Hunt told journalist Pearson that he would not stand for re-election if the opposition used his son's arrest against him, but he feared publicity about the threats against him as well, believing that his wife could not bear it. Hunt announced his intention to run for re-election on April 15, 1954. A poll taken on April 5, 1954, gave Hunt 54.5% of the vote, with the nearest opponent at 19.3%. In May 1954, as a member of the Senate's "liberal bloc," he proposed rules for Senate committees designed to eliminate some of Senator McCarthy's tactics. At the end of the month, Senator Bridges renewed his threat to publicize Hunt Jr.'s offense to Wyoming voters. On June 8, 1954, following medical examinations at Bethesda Naval Hospital
National Naval Medical Center
The National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, USA — commonly known as the Bethesda Naval Hospital — was for decades the flagship of the United States Navy's system of medical centers. A federal institution, it conducted medical and dental research as well as providing health care for...
, Hunt wrote to the chair of the Wyoming Democratic party, citing health concerns: "I shall never again be a candidate for an elective office." He did not resign from the Senate.
On June 19, he 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
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
reported that he acted "in apparent despondency over his health" and left four sealed notes.
Just one day before Hunt's suicide, Senator McCarthy had accused an unnamed Senator of "just plain wrong doing". After Hunt's suicide, McCarthy's Senate ally, Karl Mundt of South Dakota denied that McCarthy was referring to Hunt.
The day after Hunt's suicide, Pearson published his charges about how Republican Senators had threatened Hunt, but described Hunt's 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 son's 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."
He was buried on June 22 in Beth El Cemetery following a brief church service in Cheyenne, Wyoming. At the time of his death Hunt was a major in the Reserve Corps.
On June 24, 1954, Wyoming Governor Clifford Joy Rogers
Clifford Joy Rogers
Clifford Joy "Doc" Rogers was an American politician who served as the 22nd Governor of Wyoming briefly from 1953 until 1955. He was a Republican.Rogers also served as State Treasurer of Wyoming twice ....
appointed Republican Edward D. Crippa
Edward D. Crippa
Edward David Crippa was an American politician who served as a U.S. Senator from Wyoming.Crippa was born in Rock Springs, Sweetwater County, Wyoming. During World War I, Crippa served as a private in the United States Army....
to fill the remainder of Hunt's Senate term. Democrat Joseph C. O'Mahoney
Joseph C. O'Mahoney
Joseph Christopher O'Mahoney was a Democratic United States Senator from Wyoming.O'Mahoney was born in Chelsea, Suffolk County, Massachusetts, November 5, 1884. He attended the parochial and public schools and Columbia University, New York City...
won the seat in the November 1954 election.
On July 9, Blick signed an affidavit exonerating Bridges and Welker of pressuring him, but his decision to prosecute Hunt Jr. remained unexplained. Following the election, on November 9, 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." Hunt's cousin, William M. Spencer, president of the North American Car Corporation in Chicago, wrote Welker after learning he had eulogized Hunt:
Lester C Hunt, Jr. 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
Nicholas von Hoffman
Nicholas von Hoffman is an American journalist and author. He wrote for the Washington Post. Later, TV audiences knew him as a "Point-Counterpoint" commentator for CBS's 60 Minutes, from which Don Hewitt fired him in 1974.-Biography:He is of German-Russian extraction, descendant of Melchior...
, 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.
Later references
Allen DruryAllen Drury
Allen Stuart Drury was a U.S. novelist. He wrote the 1959 novel Advise and Consent, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1960.- Early life & ancestry :...
used Hunt's blackmail and suicide as the basis for his 1959 best-selling and Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
-winning novel Advise and Consent
Advise and Consent
Advise and Consent is a 1959 political novel by Allen Drury that explores the United States Senate confirmation of controversial Secretary of State nominee Robert Leffingwell who is a former member of the Communist Party...
. 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
Advise and Consent (film)
Advise & Consent is a 1962 American motion picture based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by Allen Drury, published in 1959. The movie was adapted for the screen by Wendell Mayes and was directed by Otto Preminger...
starring Henry Fonda
Henry Fonda
Henry Jaynes Fonda was an American film and stage actor.Fonda made his mark early as a Broadway actor. He also appeared in 1938 in plays performed in White Plains, New York, with Joan Tompkins...
.
Hunt's anti-McCarthyism and his son's homosexuality are mentioned in Thomas Mallon
Thomas Mallon
Thomas Mallon is a novelist and critic. He was born in Glen Cove, New York. He attended Brown University as an undergraduate and earned a Master of Arts and a Ph.D. from Harvard. He received the Ingram Merrill Foundation Award in 1994 and won a Rockefeller Fellowship in 1987...
's Fellow Travelers (2007), a novel set in the 1950s that describes a young man's introduction to hardball Washington politics as he discovers his gay identity.