Lester Callaway Hunt

Background

Hunt was born in Isabel in Edgar County in eastern Illinois, in 1892. He was the son of William and Viola Callaway Hunt.

Education

Following graduation from high school he attended Illinois Wesleyan University in 1912 and 1913. In 1914 he enrolled in the school of dentistry at St. Louis University. To finance his studies he worked evenings and weekends for a railroad, first as a freight handler and later as a checker and claims clerk.

Career

Upon completing his training in dentistry he established a practice in Lander, Wyo. , a town of 2, 000 people at the eastern approach to South Pass. Hunt had first gone to Lander in the summer of 1911 to play baseball. An outstanding athlete in high school, he had attracted the attention of a Lander recruiter while playing semiprofessional ball in Peoria, Ill. He tended bar in Lander when not playing with the town team during the summers of 1911 and 1912. Returning to Lander in 1917, Hunt briefly practiced dentistry there before he joined the Army Dental Corps. He served at various stations in Arizona and New Mexico from 1917 to 1919.

In Wyoming Hunt found many outlets for his energy besides dentistry – he hunted and fished; was active in the American Legion, Masons, Elks, and Eagles; and was a scoutmaster, school board member, and president of the Chamber of Commerce. He served as president of the state board of dental examiners and president of the state dental association. He first sought political office in 1932, winning a seat in the lower house of the state legislature. In the same year his son suffered a broken leg that indirectly influenced Hunt to give up dentistry for politics permanently. He three times donated material for bone grafts, and thereafter found it painful to stand beside a dentist's chair for long periods; he therefore campaigned for the office of Wyoming Secretary of State in 1934. He won and continued in public office for the rest of his life.

Hunt served two terms as Wyoming Secretary of State (1935 to 1943) and six years as governor (1943 to 1949). He left the governorship at the midpoint of his second term, having been elected to the United States Senate with 57 percent of the vote in a contest with the incumbent, Republican E. V. Robertson. Hunt's official campaign report (1948) showed receipts of $20, 275 and expenditure of only $9, 519.

As Secretary of State, Hunt attracted unusual attention by introducing with considerable fanfare the Wyoming bucking horse license plate in 1936, and by aggressively promoting a highway safety campaign. As governor he demanded balanced budgets, defended states' rights, and condemned federal bureaucracy. As a United States senator he showed special concern for dentists and doctors, but he also championed the rights of women and worked for a bipartisan foreign policy, a strong national defense (his major committee was Armed Services), federal aid to Wyoming reclamation projects, and the transfer of federal mineral rights to the states. He tried to eliminate congressional immunity from slander and libel charges and worked conscientiously and quietly on the Kefauver Crime Investigation Commission.

In 1950 Hunt introduced a bill for a voluntary health insurance program with prepaid insurance for low-income families. His bill called for a Department of Health headed by a secretary with cabinet rank. He proposed federal subsidies for hospital construction and for the training of more doctors, dentists, and nurses. One of his bills, enacted in 1953, established the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. The commission concerned itself primarily with promoting expansion of health services in the eleven western states.

Hunt lost enthusiasm for politics when the respected senior senator from Wyoming, Joseph C. O'Mahoney, a Democrat, suffered defeat in 1952. He declined an offer of membership on the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in 1953, explaining that it might interfere with his independence of action in the Senate. Hunt faced a difficult contest for reelection in 1954. Since control of the Senate might well hinge on the result, no holds would be barred; but most observers thought that Hunt could win. Nevertheless, on June 8, 1954, he notified the state Democratic chairman, "I shall never again be a candidate for elective office. " Complex personal problems overwhelmed him.

On June 19 in his Senate office he fatally shot himself with a . 22-caliber rifle. Immediately after Hunt's death, Drew Pearson wrote a syndicated column accusing Republican senators Herman Welker and Styles Bridges of blackmailing the senator into withdrawing from the 1954 campaign – Hunt's son had been arrested in 1953 on a morals charge, and the subsequent trial and conviction had received national publicity. In the many eulogies delivered by colleagues in the Senate the most trenchant comment was one by Edwin C. Johnson, a Democrat from Colorado: "He was ill prepared for the cruel, brutal, rough aspect of national partisan politics. "

Achievements

• He is remembered as a Democratic politician and dentist from the state of Wyoming.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Memorial services held in the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States, together with remarks presented in eulogy of Lester Callaway Hunt (late a Senator from Wyoming)

    (This book was digitized and reprinted from the collection...)

Politics

Hunt was a Democrat and his success in a normally Republican state depended on his pleasing personality, energy, devotion to duty, astute appraisal of public opinion, and readiness to restrain liberal inclinations as needed. He carefully avoided partisanship, believing that "the very smallest amount of politics that we can get along with is the best for good government. " But on the basis of long and close acquaintance, Wyoming's Democratic national committeeman Tracy McCraken said, "If ever we've seen a natural politician it was he. "

Connections

On February 3, 1918, he married Emily Nathelle Higby of Lander. The Hunts had two children.

Father:

William Hunt

1867–1938

Mother:

Ola Callaway Hunt

1871–1910

Spouse:

Emily Nathelle Higby Hunt

1895–1990

References

• Riding high: America in the cold war