Homer E. Capehart

Homer E. Capehart
United States Senator
from Indiana
In office
January 3, 1945 – January 3, 1963
Preceded by William E. Jenner
Succeeded by Birch Bayh
Personal details
Born Homer Earl Capehart
June 6, 1897
Algiers, Indiana
Died September 3, 1979(1979-09-03) (aged 82)
Indianapolis, Indiana
Resting place

Crown Hill Cemetery

Indianapolis, Indiana
Political party Republican
Signature
Military service
Service/branch United States Army
Years of service 1917–1919
Rank Sergeant
Battles/wars World War I

Homer Earl Capehart (June 6, 1897 – September 3, 1979), American business innovator and politician, was born in Algiers, Indiana, in Pike County. During the First World War, he served as a Sergeant in the United States Army Supply Corps, but was never sent overseas.

Business career

Capehart attained fame as the father of the jukebox industry. He worked for the company Holcomb and Hoke, which made record players and popcorn machines, until 1928. He started his own company in 1928, and was forced out of the company by investors in 1931. The company was taken over as one of the divisions in the new Farnsworth Radio and Television Company in 1939.[1] In 1932 Capehart formed a new company called Packard. Packard developed the Simplex mechanism for automatic record changing, and sold the device to Wurlitzer. The entire company was eventually bought by Wurlitzer.

Political career

Being the center-point for a Republican Party revolution in Indiana and the Midwest, mainly by sponsoring a huge "Cornfield-Conference" on one of his farms in 1938, Capehart was first elected to the United States Senate in 1944, narrowly defeating Henry Schricker, going on to win subsequent victories in 1950 and 1956 against token opposition. When first elected to the Senate at the height of the Second World War, Capehart supported efforts to compromise with the Japanese on terms of surrender in the Summer of 1945 when Senate Minority Leader Wallace H. White, Jr. stated that the war might end sooner if President Truman would state specifically in the upper chamber just what unconditional surrender meant for the Japanese. After 1945, Capehart was critical of the Truman administration and the military for their postwar policies in Germany, accusing Truman and General Dwight D. Eisenhower of a conspiracy to starve the remains of the German nation.

Throughout the 1950s, Capehart was constantly at odds with his Senate colleague William E. Jenner. Jenner was a staunch isolationist Republican who consistently opposed President Eisenhower's "modern-Republicanism." Capehart, although an isolationist himself during his first term in the Senate, became increasingly more internationalist during his later years in the Senate and this eventually led to the split with Jenner.

By 1959, Jenner had retired and Democrat Vance Hartke had taken his place. Capehart was extremely critical of President John Kennedy and his New Frontier programs such as Medicare and the Peace Corps. In 1962, Capehart attained his greatest popularity and what would ultimately become his lasting legacy as one of the key figures in the Cuban Missile Crisis by calling for a "crack-down on Cuba" and warning of a missile build-up on the Island. Kennedy, before receiving the famous spy-plane photos, thought Capehart was "inventing an issue." This was not the case and Capehart, although not appreciated at the time, has come to be seen in a more positive light because of his early and aggressive stances on Cuba.

Capehart also backed, with Senator Kenneth Wherry, legislation for building military family housing in the post World War II era, when there were critical shortages of such housing. However, his support of public housing for veterans was part of his support of a strong defence, which he considered a legitimate use of public money. He opposed social welfare schemes to give away houses to the poor at public expense as unconstitutional. In 1955 the U.S. Senate initiated a groundbreaking bill which authorized the construction of 540,000 public housing units over four years. Capehart, believing the bill was socialistic in nature, and lacking enough support to kill it, introduced an amendment which would have reduced the authorization to 35,000 units. Although Capehart thought he had enough votes to pass his amendment (even going so far as to tell Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson on the morning of the vote, "this time I'm going to rub your nose in shit."), his amendment was defeated by last minute maneuvering engineered by Lyndon Johnson.[2] Capehart was also an advocate of clean air legislation, and briefly served on the Senate Rackets Committee with the likes of Senators John F. Kennedy, Barry Goldwater, and Karl Mundt.[3]

During the 1962 election, Capehart was narrowly defeated by 34-year-old Birch Bayh and subsequently, he retired to his farming and business interests in Indiana, occasionally returning to Washington to provide both foreign policy and domestic-issue advice. Jaded by the Watergate affair, Capehart later in life became increasingly critical of President Richard Nixon.

He died at age 82 at Saint Vincent Hospital in Indianapolis in 1979.

He is honored (along with Indiana Senator Sherman Minton) in the Minton-Capehart Federal Building by the Indiana World War Memorial Plaza in Indianapolis. His name is also memorialized in the Capehart Room in Reed College's Old Dorm Block, which once contained a record player that Capehart donated to the college.[4]

5. Donaldson R. "Thirteen Days" [DVD]. United States: New Line Home Entertainment; 2001.

References

  1. ↑ Fortune Magazine Feb 1941
  2. ↑ Caro, Robert A. (2002). The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate. Random House. p. 606. ISBN 0-394-52836-0.
  3. ↑ Hersh, Burton (2007). Bobby and J. Edgar: The Historic Face-Off Between The Kennedys and J. Edgar Hoover that Transformed America. New York: Basic Books. p. 175. ISBN 9-780465-006076.
  4. ↑ Sheehy, John (2012). Comrades of the Quest: An Oral History of Reed College. Oregon State University Press. p. 137. ISBN 978-0-87071-667-6.

External links

United States Senate
Preceded by
William E. Jenner		 United States Senator (Class 3) from Indiana
1945–1963 		Succeeded by
Birch Bayh
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