Word: vandenberg
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Making of a Man. Arthur Vandenberg was born in 1884 in Grand Rapids, a town famed for its furniture and its Dutch-descended population. His grandfather helped nominate Lincoln in 1860. His father, Aaron Vandenberg, was a harness-maker who was cleaned out in the Cleveland panic of 1893. After that, Father Vandenberg gave his son the stern ad monition: "Always be a Republican." In the government club at Grand Rapids' Central High School, young "Van," who had a flair for oratory, was the "Senator from Michigan." Few doubted even then that he would like to have the title...
...heroes was William Alden Smith, an old-fashioned politico with a sugar-scoop coat and flowing black bow tie, who was soon to become U.S. Senator. In 1907, Smith bought the Herald. The morning after his purchase he walked into the office and found young Arthur Vandenberg sitting in the editor's chair. "I'm here to stay," said Reporter Vandenberg. He stayed - for 21 years...
Borrowing some money, Van bought Herald stock, prospered, married, bought a house, raised three children. His first wife died in 1916. Two years later he married a former college friend. Hazel Whitaker, a women's-page writer for the Chicago Tribune. The Vandenbergs became solid citizens of Grand Rapids. (In 1928, when the Herald was sold, Vandenberg's stock brought...
Editorializing was patently fun for Editor Vandenberg. He was already becoming known in Michigan political circles (his own listing in the 1920-21 Who's Who stated: "Widely known as a popular and political orator"). Politicos urged him to run for this office or that. Biding his time, Vandenberg stuck to his prose-which was oratorical, occasionally thunderous, and often adorned with archaic words. (He still writes with a dictionary on one side of his typewriter and a Bible on the other...
Making of a Senator. From that time on, Editor Vandenberg became a politician. He got to know Warren Harding, who was also a Midwestern newspaper editor, and helped write the foreign relations sections of Harding's campaign speeches. He enthusiastically supported Henry Cabot Lodge, and is credited with changing William Howard Taft's original enthusiasms for the League of Nations by the sheer force of a searching interview with the ex-President...