Word: alameda
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...April 25), Portland, Ore. has been keyed to a high pitch-somewhere between a laugh and a scream-by fake bomb threats. Last week another bomb exploded in Portland, this time with fatal results. The victim: Oliver Kermit Smith, 35, a prominent lawyer who lived in the highly respectable Alameda district with his wife, Marjorie, 34. After an evening of gin rummy at the Columbia-Edgewater Country Club, he called his wife to say he would be home in 10 minutes; he went out to his car, switched on the ignition and was blown to bits by a dynamite bomb...
Born: June 26, 1908, in Alameda, Calif., the youngest of Joseph R. and Ellie Fife Knowland's three children. Billy's mother died soon afterward. He spent his first seven years in Washington, D.C., where his father was a Republican Congressman who later was defeated for the Senate. The elder Knowland grew wealthy as publisher of the Oakland Tribune...
Education: Graduated from Alameda High School, where he edited the newspaper and was elected president of the student body, and from the University of California (B.A. in political science...
Later, as a deputy city attorney for Oakland, deputy and district attorney for Alameda County (Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda) and attorney general of California, he showed no signs of terror in or out of court. He was a relentless prosecutor, convicted an average of 15 murderers a year, chased grafters out of office and into prison. But he drew no particular joy from his victories in criminal cases. Said he: "I never heard a jury bring in a verdict of guilty but that I felt sick at the pit of my stomach...
...first lieutenant in 1919, took a job as clerk of the California state assembly's judiciary committee and never returned to private practice; he has been a lawyer in government ever since. He was deputy city attorney for Oakland in 1919-20, deputy district attorney for Alameda County (Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda) in 1920-25, district attorney in 1925-39. A relentless prosecutor, he convicted an average of 15 murderers a year, jailed the county sheriff for gambling graft, convicted Alameda's mayor for bribery and theft of public funds. None of his convictions was ever reversed on appeal...