Death of a Senator

Bob Kerr was born in an Oklahoma log cabin; he became the wealthiest member of the U.S. Senate. He could have bought Brooks Brothers out of the change in his pants pocket; but his baggy blue suits looked as if they had been ordered from a Montgomery Ward catalogue. He was a deeply Christian man who gave at least 30% of his vast wealth to the Baptist church; yet he felt no compunction whatever about using his Senate position to fight for tax laws that would enhance his own riches. He could be gentle; once, when a longtime Negro houseman was dying, Kerr sat for hours at the bedside, holding his hand in deep grief. But Kerr could also be brutal: in a Senate committee meeting, he once goaded Illinois Democrat Paul Douglas into a fury, then challenged Douglas to a fist fight--even though Douglas has a crippled arm as a result of World War II wounds.

Many years ago, Kerr set forth his ambitions: "A family, to make a million dollars and to be Governor of Oklahoma --in that order." He achieved all these--and much more. Some of his colleagues liked him; others loathed him. Almost all respected and feared him. Said a friend, New Mexico's Democratic Senator Clinton Anderson: "I used to tell Bob that I'd like to take a knife and open up his skull and examine the convolutions of his brain.

He's the smartest man I know."

Such a man was Robert Samuel Kerr that when he died last week at 66, of a coronary occlusion, after two weeks in a hospital, neither his friends nor his enemies could really believe it. For Kerr seemed indestructible.

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 27 1/2% 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 into combat. "You say I'm an Oklahoma Senator more than a national Senator?" he often asked. "Yes, that's what I'm here for."

The son of a 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 year helped push through much of President Kennedy's tax program, to which Byrd was opposed. In tacit return for Kerr's favors, the President did not push for changes in the oil-depletion allowance.

To 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 Homer Capehart rose to protest. The next day Kerr answered Capehart with a deft revision of the Congressional Record: "I do not say that the President has no brains at all. I reserve that broad and sweeping accusation for some of my cherished colleagues in this body."

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, his wealth was estimated at $35 to $40 million.

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 of his power, Kerr still took the most pride in what he had done for his own state. As he flew over the flat land near Tulsa last month, Bob Kerr said: "If I live ten more years in this job, there won't be a muddy stream left in Oklahoma."

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