Word: stevensons
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During the early years of the New Deal, loyal Democrat Stevenson worked as a lawyer for the Agricultural Adjustment Administration and the Federal Alcohol Control Administration. He served as an aide to Navy Secretary Frank Knox during World War II and later wrote of that period: "They used to say that if you worked in wartime Washington, you would get one of three things: galloping frustration, ulcers, or a sense of humor. I guess I got them all, and I also got a great education in war, the world, our Government and my fellow man under every sort of trial...
...Stevenson's true calling was public service, and Ellen detested the political life. In 1949, while he was Governor of Illinois, she insisted on a divorce. It was a bitter blow to Stevenson, who, as recently as 1960, said wistfully: "I would rather be married than President." To day, Ellen Borden Stevenson, 56, lives as a recluse in a dingy greystone Chicago house on which the mortgage was recently foreclosed; she has gone through most of her family fortune, and her three sons have filed suit to supervise her financial affairs, charging that she is incapable of managing them...
...course his circle was far from completed. In 1948 he was chosen by Illinois' Democratic leaders to run for Governor against Republican Dwight Green, whose administration had been splotched by scandal; Stevenson won by a record 572,000 votes and set about riding close herd over a heavily Republican legislature; in 1951 alone, he vetoed no fewer than 134 bills...
...decided not to run again, and the winner of most Democratic presidential preference primaries was Tennessee's Senator Estes Kefauver, a lone-wolf liberal who was unacceptable to most national party leaders. Casting desperately around for someone else, they were drawn to the able, attractive Governor of Illinois. Stevenson was genuinely reluctant; the night before the national convention in Chicago, he sat up until 2 a.m. in Cook County Boss Jake Arvey's kitchen, suggesting alternative names and insisting that he wanted only to run for re-election as Governor...
Acceptance. When he was nominated anyway, Stevenson accepted with a speech that was memorable for its eloquence, but still betrayed his inner doubts. He had not sought the nomination, he said, because the burdens of presidential office "stagger the imagination." He continued: "Its potential for good or evil, now and in the years of our lives, smothers exultation and converts vanity to prayer. I have asked the Merciful Father-the Father of us all -to let this cup pass from me. But from such dread responsibility one does not shrink in fear, in self-interest, or in false humility...