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Posted on Mon, Feb. 23, 2009

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1940 candidate for president had Kansas ties

The Wichita Eagle

This is one in a series of vignettes celebrating Kansas history. The series' name comes from the state motto, Ad astra per aspera: "To the stars through difficulties."

BY BECCY TANNER

"Education is the mother of leadership."
--Wendell Willkie

For a brief time, the later-to-be presidential candidate was the most popular man in Coffeyville.

It was his first job out of school, and the young teacher challenged the minds of Coffeyville's high school students from September 1913 to November 1914.

He taught history; coached basketball, track and debate; and advised the school's literary society.

When he accepted a higher-paying position the next year, the mournful students observed "Willkie Day."

More than a quarter-century later, when he ran as the Republican candidate for president of the United States against Franklin D. Roosevelt, many of those students cast their votes for Wendell Willkie.

One former student wrote to Willkie after the election in 1940 to tell him she had voted "the Republican ticket for the only man who could ever cause me to do it, who has educated me to be a Democrat."

Willkie was just one more presidential candidate in the fall of 1940 who had Kansas ties.

Wichitan Earl Browder, secretary of the U.S. Communist Party, also ran for president. Browder received only 47,000 votes in 1940.

Willkie, who became a Republican in 1939 and was described as a maverick businessman, had more support. He received more than 22 million votes compared to FDR's 27.3 million.

Kansas, traditionally Republican, supported Willkie in 1940, as did 10 other states, mostly in the Midwest.

Willkie's rise to the nation's spotlight was fairly rapid.

After Coffeyville, Willkie went on to become a lawyer and then president of the Commonwealth and Southern Corp., the nation's largest utility holding company. He was a vocal critic of FDR's New Deal Tennessee Valley Authority, a government agency that brought flood control and electricity to the Tennessee Valley.

Willkie was concerned that the project had an unfair advantage over private utility corporations.

After the 1940 election, Willkie became a supporter of FDR and represented the United States during several trips overseas in the following three years. Through it all, he maintained contact with his former students in Kansas.

He wrote to one student that he "always lived with gusto and pleasure but I really think the happiest time I ever had was while I was teaching at Coffeyville."

Willkie died Oct. 8, 1944, at age 52.

Eleanor Roosevelt eulogized him:

"Americans tend to forget the names of the men who lost their bid for the presidency. Willkie proved the exception to this rule."

Reach Beccy Tanner at 316-268-6336 or btanner@wichitaeagle.com.