Robert Samuel Kerr was born on September 11, 1896 in the Chickasaw Nation, Indian Territory, near the present town of Ada, Oklahoma, United States. He was the son of William Samuel Kerr, a hardworking and ambitious pioneer and tenant farmer, and of Margaret Eloda Wright.
Kerr attended Ada public schools, and after graduating from high school taught in a country school. With his meager salary he financed a two-year correspondence course from East Central Normal School that brought a degree in 1911. Later he studied law for a year at the University of Oklahoma.
Kerr was commissioned a second lieutenant during World War I, but did not see combat. He settled down as a wholesale produce merchant in Ada. Later he established a law partnership with a prominent judge in 1922, but a law career was not his goal. Early in life he told his father he wanted three things: a family, a million dollars, and the governorship of Oklahoma, in that order. He married secind time in 1925 and after several years of accepting shares in oil drilling leases in exchange for his legal services, he gave up his law practice. In 1929 Kerr and his brother-in-law established the Anderson-Kerr Drilling Company. Six years later he began a long and profitable collaboration with Phillips Petroleum Company that led to his association with geologist Dean A. McGee and the eventual establishment of Kerr-McGee Oil Industries. Concurrent with his business ventures Kerr strengthened his ties within the Democratic party at the state and national levels, contributing generously to Democratic candidates. In 1931 he was appointed a special justice of the Oklahoma Supreme Court. Four years later Governor Ernest Marland appointed Kerr to the Unofficial Pardon and Parole Board. He was elected to the Democratic National Committee in 1940, and proved to be an effective fund raiser.
Kerr was elected governor of Oklahoma in 1942. His margin of victory was slim, a reflection of the strength of anti-New Deal and isolationist sentiment in the state. He presided over the demise of Oklahoma's turbulent era of "Wild West" politics. When his tenure ended, Oklahoma was free of debt and poised to take advantage of the seemingly unlimited possibilities to develop and modernize through federal largess in the postwar period. In 1948 he was elected to the United States Senate. In Washington he joined an exceptional group of freshman Democratic senators: Paul Douglas, Estes Kefauver, Hubert Humphrey, Clinton P. Anderson, and Lyndon Baines Johnson. These men influenced virtually every national issue of the 1950's and 1960's. In the Senate, Kerr allied with powerful southern committee chairmen. He became the protégé of Richard Russell of Georgia. Realizing that the path to influence was effective committee work, Kerr first used the Public Works Committee as his Senate power base. But before the end of his first term, he had secured seats on the Senate Finance Committee and on the Democratic Policy Committee.
In 1950 Kerr led the congressional forces trying to exempt independent oil and gas producers from Federal Power Commission regulation. Ironically, these events which earned him recognition as a possible presidential contender in 1952, explained a major part of his failure to receive the Democratic nomination. Thereafter he could never shed the stereotype that he was a parochial, special-interest politician. He therefore resolved to exploit the image. Denied the presidency, he became a power in the Senate. He concentrated on legislation to benefit Oklahoma, such as water development, but he also worked on national issues, such as broadening Social Security coverage and the development of the manned space program.
Kerr became chairman of the powerful Aeronautical and Space Sciences Committee in 1961. He was indispensable in the enactment of the Kennedy administration's moon program, and was also a kind of "shadow leader" for Kennedy's crucial trade and tax legislation. Kerr's emergence in 1962 as the only man in Congress who was a powerful legislative force in his own right occurred because of a peculiar combination of weakened congressional leadership, a politically unattractive legislation program and the Oklahoman's own institutional power and dominating personality. On December 16, 1962, after a busy legislation session and a strenuous congressional campaign, Kerr suffered a mild heart attack. He died in Washington, D. C. Kerr's power within the Senate developed in the late 1950's and matured only in the two years before his death.
Kerr was the founder of Kerr-McGee Oil Industries and was distinguished for his service in the state government and U. S. Congress. He was keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention, where he helped shape the strategy that won Harry S. Truman the vice-presidential nomination. As Oklahoma's chief executive he stabilized the state's finances and worked to develop a diversified industrial base.
Kerr joined the Baptist Church in 1905, and he taught a Sunday school class regularly while governor and senator. He kept his boyhood pledge not to drink alcohol, and his command of Scripture was prodigious.
Kerr was a member of the Democratic Party. His greatest asset was his undoctrinaire approach to politics. Faced with a legislative problem, he was remarkably free of preconceived ideas, a quality that enhanced his role as the legislative broker for the Kennedy administration. Depending on the circumstances, he was a protectionist or a freetrader, a free spender or an economy advocate, an enthusiastic champion of the large corporation or a compassionate solicitor for the aged pensioner or the abandoned child. Such flexibility did not mean that he was devoid of a political philosophy. His was a materialistic view: the federal government's proper role was funding and expanding the economy through political action in order to widen and stabilize the social system in which individuals made their way. Like so many American politicians, Kerr talked Jeffersonian rhetoric while practicing Hamiltonian principles. In his mature years Kerr's single-minded purpose was to regenerate Oklahoma, to restore the vigor and confidence of territorial days that the hard times of the Great Depression had beaten down. In doing so, he added to his own wealth, but that was not his basic motive. Business was a diversion; riches, the pleasing result. Politics was his passion.
Kerr married Reba Shelton on December 5, 1919. The early 1920's were years of personal tragedy for him. His twin daughters died at birth in 1920 and his wife and baby son died in childbirth in February 1924. On December 26, 1925, he married Grayce Breene; they had four children.
