Word: kerrs
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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...
...Hell with a Bucket. Oklahoma's Kerr was also chairman of the Rivers and Harbors subcommittee, which rolls out the pork barrel. When other Senators wanted approval of pet home-state spending projects, they had to come to Kerr-and he always remembered his debtors. He was as ruthless in public debate as in private trading. He once made a Senate speech claiming that Republican Dwight Eisenhower could not comprehend the nation's fiscal policies, "because one cannot do that without brains, and he does not have them." There upon Indiana's loyal but hapless Republican Senator...
When Lyndon Johnson became Vice President two years ago, he left a vacuum in effective Senate leadership. In such vacuums, power goes to those who seek it. Kerr sought it and, even though he held no official leadership title, he soon became known as the Senator to see to get things done. He was, said the late Speaker Sam Rayburn, the "kind of man who would charge hell with a bucket of water and think he could put it out." When he first went to the Senate, he was worth about $3,000,000; at the time of his death...
Because of Kerr, Oklahoma did every bit as well. Last year Kerr's state received about 10% of all federal works projects. In the years before Kerr went to the Senate, the Army engineers had spent some $63 million on Oklahoma water-development projects; they have since spent an estimated $312 million. In October 1961 President Kennedy flew to Kerr's 55,000-acre ranch near Big Cedar to dedicate a road that, in the words of one Oklahoma paper, "starts nowhere in particular and goes to a suburb of the same place." Even at the height...