Background

Joseph Nye Welch was born in Primghar, Iowa, the son of William Welch, a farmer and handyman, and Martha Thyer, who had been a hired girl on his brother's farm. He recalled "the blessing of being poor and totally unaware of it. "

Education

He attended Grinnell College and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1914, then attended Harvard Law School and graduated in 1917, magna cum laude, with the second highest grade point average in his graduating class. Welch then attended Army Officer Candidate School, but was not commissioned until after Armistice Day. He served briefly with the legal division of the U. S. Shipping Board.

Career

In 1919, Welch joined the Boston firm of Hale and Dorr. He became a partner in 1923 and a senior partner in 1936. He practiced civil law, especially antitrust, libel, estates, wills, and tax cases. An esteemed trial lawyer, he headed the trial department of the firm. He developed an engaging, self-effacing courtroom style. Puckishly, he pointed out that he lost his most noted case, a $7 million tax dispute involving the Chicago stockyards. Though active in bar and legal associations, Welch was not a joiner; he preferred to spend time with his family. Welch's comfortable existence was interrupted in April 1954 by a call to serve as special counsel to the Department of the Army in its confrontation with Senator Joseph R. McCarthy. Hearings were held before the Special Subcommittee on Investigations of the Government Operations Committee to unravel a snarl of charges. The army claimed that McCarthy and two aides, especially Roy M. Cohn, had exerted improper pressures to obtain preferential treatment for G. David Schine, a consultant to McCarthy's subcommittee who had faced induction into the military. McCarthy riposted that the army had held Private Schine hostage to blunt McCarthy's investigation of subversive employees at the Fort Monmouth Signal Corps laboratories. Although he was a Republican who was known to several members of the Eisenhower administration, Welch had never been politically active: the circumstances of his selection are obscure. If Welch expected the probe to resemble a trial, he was soon disabused. The thirty-six days of hearings, before television cameras that beamed them to 20 million viewers, were political theater in which legal standards of relevancy and materiality went for naught. Welch showed his acumen nonetheless. He sensed that the famous "cropped photo" of Army Secretary Robert T. Stevens and Schine had been doctored and that the "FBI document" introduced into the hearings was a carbon "copy of precisely nothing. " The army principals had not acquitted themselves very well in their testimony, but Welch was ready with vigorous interrogation when Cohn and McCarthy took the stand. Projecting a bemused, urbane, Dickensian image, he proved to be a master of the weapon of humor. His deft thrusts aroused in McCarthy a strong aversion to the man he termed "a clever little lawyer. " On June 9, 1954, Welch goaded McCarthy into what became the dramatic climax of the hearings. As Welch ragged Cohn about the need to oust Communists from defense installations "by sundown, " McCarthy lashed out at this "phony" solicitude and noted that Welch had tried to "foist" Frederick G. Fisher, Jr. , a member of Hale and Dorr, upon the subcommittee despite Fisher's membership "for a number of years. .. of an organization which was named, oh, years and years ago, as the legal bulwark of the Communist party. " Explaining the innocence of the episode, Welch added: "Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel as to do an injury to that lad. .. . I like to think I am a gentleman, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me. " McCarthy bored in again but Welch, verging on tears, cut him off, as forbidden applause reverberated through the room. The hearings ended June 17, a victory for neither side; legal issues had long since been muddled. The Fisher episode, by juxtaposing two divergent characters, may have epitomized what McCarthyism meant, and contributed to the indeterminate, but profound, decline in McCarthy's stature. The Boston lawyer personified a felicitous contrast to the senator. If too modest, Welch was near the truth in saying, "The people made me into what they needed. " Welch hoped to return to his accustomed obscurity, but it was not to be. Fame opened up a new career. His theatrical talents led him back to television in 1956 as narrator of a much-praised series of "Omnibus" programs on the constitutional history of the nation. Appearances on other shows followed, and in 1959 Welch played the judge in the movie Anatomy of a Murder. He received excellent notices. Welch marveled that his later years could yield such joy and adventure. They were saddened only by the death of his wife in 1956. He died at Hyannis, Massachussets.

Achievements

• He served as the chief counsel for the United States Army while it was under investigation for Communist activities by Senator Joseph McCarthy's Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, an investigation known as the Army–McCarthy hearings. His confrontation with McCarthy during the hearings, in which he famously asked McCarthy "At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" is seen as a turning point in the history of McCarthyism.

Works

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  • Trademarks and Unfair Competition

    (This Trademarks and Unfair Competition reflects the pheno...)

Connections

On September 20 of that year, married Judith Hampton Lyndon of Washington, Ga. They had two sons. After her death he married Agnes Rodgers Brown, a family friend, on July 13, 1957.

Father:

William Welch

A farmer and handyman

Mother:

Martha Thyer

Spouse:

Agnes Rodgers Brown

Spouse:

Judith Hampton Lyndon