Word: homeric
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Attracted to politics at 14, when he served as a page in the Texas legislature Homer worked his way through the University of Texas Law School as a deputy sheriff. He was elected to the state legislature in 1936, later became Travis County district attorney. After a 3½-year wartime stint in Naval intelligence, during which he rose to lieutenant commander, Thornberry opened his own law practice, served on the Austin city council and as mayor pro tem. The nonpaying city post wound up costing him money, for Homer's law clients expected him to fix such things...
After Lyndon Johnson won his famed 87-vote "landslide" election to the US Senate in 1948, Thornberry succeeded him in the House, thus became "my Congressman' to L.B.J. When Johnson was recuperating from his massive 1955 heart attack, Homer often stopped by to play dominoes; and the President recalled, ten years later: "He let me win every game, and now he is on the Circuit Court." He was with Johnson in Los Angeles during the 1960 fight for the Democratic presidential nomination, and when L.B.J. was offered the vice-presidency by John F. Kennedy, Thornberry...
Thornberry got the news of his appointment in the midst of a dinner party in Austin, when Johnson phoned him. "Homer," said the President am going to nominate you for the Supreme Court." Replied the overwhelmed Thornberry: "I hope I can deserve this confidence." Homer's wife Eloise was more down to earth. Said she of the President: "That dear...
...white hair, his twinkling blue eyes a his backslapping "How-yew-all? manner, would be better cast as a rural justice of the peace than as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. But the court often has a way of bringing out the most in a man, and Homer's odyssey could well end in triumph...
...somebody else who gets the job done. That may sound like 'High School Harry,' but that's the case." In one game against the second-place Cleveland Indians last week, Northrup forgot his aching knee long enough to clout a brace of grand-slam homers and tie a big-league record.* In another, it was Dick Tracewski, a .170 batter, who hit a game-winning homer to beat the Indians 4-1. "Now I have nothing to look forward to for the rest of the year," said Tracewski with the coyness of a contender. Nothing, of course...