Word: kerrs
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Kerr was born in an Oklahoma log cabin; he became the wealthiest member of the U.S. Senate. He could have bought Brooks Brothers out of the change in his pants pocket; but his baggy blue suits looked as if they had been ordered from a Montgomery Ward catalogue. He was a deeply Christian man who gave at least 30% of his vast wealth to the Baptist church; yet he felt no compunction whatever about using his Senate position to fight for tax laws that would enhance his own riches. He could be gentle; once, when a longtime Negro houseman...
Many years ago, Kerr set forth his ambitions: "A family, to make a million dollars and to be Governor of Oklahoma -in that order." He achieved all these-and much more. Some of his colleagues liked him; others loathed him. Almost all respected and feared him. Said a friend, New Mexico's Democratic Senator Clinton Anderson: "I used to tell Bob that I'd like to take a knife and open up his skull and examine the convolutions of his brain...
Such a man was Robert Samuel Kerr that when he died last week at 66, of a coronary occlusion, after two weeks in a hospital, neither his friends nor his enemies could really believe it. For Kerr seemed indestructible...
That's Why. Kerr defied description either as a liberal or a conservative. He could only be explained as an Oklahoman -and an oilman. He fought savagely for continuance of the 27½% oil-depletion tax allowance; all the while he remained chairman of the board of Kerr-McGee Oil Industries Inc., and sneered at conflict-of-interest charges. As an Oklahoman, he supported President Truman's ouster of General Douglas MacArthur-mostly because he feared that MacArthur might expand the Korean war to the point that National Guardsmen of Oklahoma's Thunderbird Division might be called...
...schoolteacher, Kerr was born near Ada, in what was then Indian territory, worked as a salesman and schoolteacher, passed the bar after clerking in an Ada law office. In 1929, he joined with his brother-in-law to start a shaky drilling company that eventually became the $200 million Kerr-McGee corporation. Kerr entered Democratic politics as a fund raiser and spokesman for the oil and gas industries, was elected Governor in 1942, and went to the Senate in 1948. He became the second-ranking Democrat, behind Virginia's Byrd, on the Senate Finance Committee. As such, he last...