Background
Kenneth Spicer Wherry was born on February 28, 1892 at Liberty, Nebraska, the son of David Emery and Jessie Comstock Wherry. The family moved to Pawnee City when Wherry was six months old.
(No Dust Jacket. Light Cover Wear. Ex-Library book. The us...)
No Dust Jacket. Light Cover Wear. Ex-Library book. The usual library markings wit some wear to cover. Content pages clean and all intact. A good reading copy.
https://www.amazon.com/Nebraska-Memorial-Addresses-Delivered-Congress/dp/B002YDVVVS?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B002YDVVVS
Businessman attorney politician
Kenneth Spicer Wherry was born on February 28, 1892 at Liberty, Nebraska, the son of David Emery and Jessie Comstock Wherry. The family moved to Pawnee City when Wherry was six months old.
He attended the public schools in that southeastern Nebraska town. Wherry attended the University of Nebraska and received the B. A. degree in 1914. While in college he was a sprinter, a debater, and one of the most popular students on campus. He studied business administration and law at Harvard University in 1915-1916, then joined the family company, opening branch stores in neighboring towns.
In 1892 his father and uncle founded Wherry Brothers, a firm that engaged in a number of business activities, including undertaking and the sale of furniture, farm implements, livestock, and real estate. The business expanded and Kenneth Wherry and his three brothers joined the company after attending college.
During World War I he served in the United States Naval Flying Corps, but did not see combat. After the war Wherry returned to Pawnee City and to the family business. He was also admitted to the bar. Typical of the small town businessman-booster of the Babbitt period, he was a joiner. As the family enterprises continued to flourish during "Coolidge Prosperity, " Wherry soon acquired three Ford automobile agencies and became a licensed embalmer in Nebraska and three adjoining states. His extroverted personality lent itself well to salesmanship and this ability earned him the nickname "Lightning Ken. " Later in the decade he also became interested in Republican politics.
Wherry was elected to the Pawnee City council in 1927 and was mayor from 1929 to 1931 and again from 1938 to 1943. He was also a state senator from 1929 to 1932. His efforts to help depression-plagued farmers brought him a reputation as a radical within the state legislature and he became further known as a protégé of the progressive United States Senator George Norris, who at one time expressed the hope that Wherry would inherit his mantle in the Senate.
He failed to win his party's nomination for the governorship in 1932 and for the United States Senate in 1934. Following these losses, and reflecting growing Republican opposition to the New Deal, he became a conservative. This political conversion, together with his talent for organizing, led the party leaders to welcome his renewed political efforts.
He became the state chairman in 1939 and under his guidance Republicans became the majority party for the first time in a decade. He organized the caravan of Republican candidates who toured the state in 1940 and decisively won the elections that year. These efforts made him popular among Republicans and he was named Midwest Director of the Republican National Committee, representing twenty-two states west of the Mississippi River.
In 1942, he challenged the eighty-one-year-old Norris for his Senate seat and won by the resounding margin of 80, 000 votes. In 1948 he was reelected over Terry Carpenter by an even wider margin. He was instrumental, in 1947, in establishing Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha as the permanent headquarters of the Strategic Air Command. He was made party whip in 1944, the only first-term senator ever to assume that position, and served as acting majority leader in the Republican Eightieth Congress and Senate minority leader from 1949 until his death, in Washington, two years later.
(No Dust Jacket. Light Cover Wear. Ex-Library book. The us...)
In the Senate, Wherry was a representative of conservative, isolationist, small-town America, typical of the Midwest after World War II. A sharp-tongued debater, he led the effort to abolish the Office of Price Administration and fought bitterly against federal aid to housing and education, an increase in the minimum wage, and other New Deal-Fair Deal social welfare measures.
He considered Robert Taft, the leader of moderate Republicans, as too liberal on many of these "socialistic schemes. " Although both parties normally supported President Truman's foreign policy, Wherry dogmatically resisted it. He was an Asia-Firster, believing Asia to be more important than Europe to American interests, and an isolationist who opposed the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, the Marshall Plan, and all other forms of foreign aid. He believed that the best hope for America lay in possessing a massive nuclear deterrent to war and was an advocate of a powerful Air Force.
Republican party regulars considered Wherry too liberal.
He became a member of the American Legion, the Kiwanis and Lions service clubs, the Public Service Club, Beta Theta Pi, the Shrine, and the Presbyterian church, and was a trustee of Nebraska Wesleyan University.
Wherry was a persuasive debater. He favored one- or two-syllable words, waved his hands, and pounded the rostrum as he spoke. His thoughts often outran his speech, however, and his opponents enjoyed collecting such "Wherryisms" as his references to "Indigo China, " "Chief Joints of Staff, " and Truman's "sugar-coating his red ink. " Much to his irritation, Washington reporters labelled him the "Merry Mortician. " But his dynamic personality and continuous attacks on the Democratic administration were rewarded by his party.
He did not use tobacco or alcohol.
On September 15, 1920, he married Marjorie Colwell, daughter of the town druggist; they had two children.