Soldiers and Statesmen: Montana History Series, #6

By Greg Strandberg

Nearly all of the politicians profiled in this book served in the military and fought in the nation’s wars. 

Most who served in our nation’s wars did not become politicians, however. They were common people for the most part, and we profile several of them. The war this time was Vietnam. A total of 32,689 Montanans served in the conflict and 267 died in it.

That’s just a small part of this book of Montana history

• Language: English
• Publisher: Greg Strandberg
• Release date: Aug 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9781536559804

Greg Strandberg

Greg Strandberg was born and raised in Helena, Montana. He graduated from the University of Montana in 2008 with a BA in History.When the American economy began to collapse Greg quickly moved to China, where he became a slave for the English language industry. After five years of that nonsense he returned to Montana in June, 2013.When not writing his blogs, novels, or web content for others, Greg enjoys reading, hiking, biking, and spending time with his wife and young son.

Book preview

Introduction

In 1960 Montana had 674,767 people split nearly evenly between urban and rural areas. By 1990 Montana had 799,065 people, with 56% living in urban areas and 44% living rurally.

During those 30 years Montana saw her population grow by over 124,000, with 90% of that growth happening in the urban areas. Real estate values of Montana farms went from $35 an acre in 1960 to $222 in 1990, an increase of 634%.

Those growth figures seem impressive, but they belie the troubles that were working on the economy at that time, troubles which drove Montana’s population growth down considerably. During the 1960s Montana’s population grew by just under 6%, then jumped to a 25% growth rate during the booming 1970s. Things fell off in the 1980s, however, and the state grew by just 3% during that decade.

It was clear where growth was happening, too. Ravalli County grew by 49%. Gallatin County grew by 52%. Missoula County grew by 56%, as did Flathead County. Lewis and Clark County grew by 59%. Lake County grew by 62%. Yellowstone County increased its population by 70% from the 1960s to 1990s.

Cascade County grew by just 9% over those three decades. Silver Bow County actually lost 27% of its population during those thirty years. Deer Lodge County lost 49%.

In 1960 in Montana there were 31,700 farms taking up 66.7 million acres, with an average farm size of 2,104 acres. By 1990 the number of farms had dropped 22% to 24,700, and they took up 60.5 million acres. By that point the size of Montana farms had increased by 345 acres to 2,449 acres a farm, on average.

Those are interesting numbers, and you’ll get a lot just like them in this book. Numbers alone make for quite the boring read, however, and that’s why we’ll have people and places and stories too. Most involve soldiers and statesmen.

Nearly all of the politicians profiled in this book served in the military and fought in the nation’s wars. Mansfield served in WWI while Tim Babcock, Lee Metcalf, John Melcher, and Dick Shoup all served in WWII in Europe. Governor Donald Nutter served in that war as well, but in the China-Burma-India Theater. Representative Battin fought there too, as did Representative Arnold Olsen. Senator Paul Hatfield fought in Korea.

JFK served in the Pacific, as did LBJ and Nixon. Jimmy Carter graduated high school six months before Pearl Harbor and sat out the war studying at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, graduating in 1946. Ronald Reagan wanted to be in the Army so bad that he started home-study courses in 1935 at the age of 24. He got into the reserves in 1937 but poor eyesight kept him out of WWII. He did his part with the public relations department on the home front, however.

Governor Forrest Anderson is one exception, for although he was old enough to serve he did not. We can’t say the same about Governor Thomas Judge, for he was born in 1934 but he still served in the U.S. Army after WWII. Governor Ted Schwinden enlisted in the Army in 1946, perhaps angry that he was a year late. Max Baucus was born four days after Pearl Harbor and spent most of the Vietnam years studying at Stanford or working in Washington.

Most who served in our nation’s wars did not become politicians, however. They were common people for the most part, and we profile several of them. The war this time was Vietnam. A total of 32,689 Montanans served in the conflict, 267 died in it. These were men like Joe Klemencic and Richard Appelhans and Jim Darcy. They’re not just numbers and we’ll profile them all.

Part I – The 1960s

America had 180.7 million people in 1960, and Montana’s 674,000 people made up 0.3% of that.

Montana’s cities weren’t what they are today. In 1960 Great Falls had 55,000 residents, Billings had nearly 53,000, Butte had about 28,000, Missoula had 27,000, Helena had 20,000, Bozeman had 13,000 and Kalispell had 10,000. Together those cities accounted for 206,000 people, or 30% of the state’s population.

So who were those people and what did they do?

The 1970 U.S. Census tells us that 161,654 men were working that year, and nearly 4,000 of them were minorities, the rest white. Another 86,688 women also worked, and just over 2,000 of them were minorities. That means 248,000 people were working, or 37% of the state’s population.

More than 53,000 people were involved in wholesale and retail trade while almost 32,000 worked in agriculture or forestry. 18,000 worked in transportation or communications or utilities, almost 15,000 worked in construction, 15,000 worked in manufacturing industries, and 14,000 worked in public administration. Another 12,000 worked in personal services and over 9,000 Montanans had their business in finance. More than 5,600 people worked in mining. The largest segment of minority employment was professional and related services.

Most married households in Montana were making $10,000 to $15,000 a year at that point, while most single people were either earning the same or earning $3,000 or less.

Those were the numbers that the 1960s gave us and they show us a little about what Montana was like. The numbers by themselves are a bit dry, however, without people and personalities to liven them up. It’s the goal of this history, therefore, to provide you with those people and personalities, and a bit more.

We’ll get started right at the top.

1: Mansfield and JFK

To fully understand John F. Kennedy’s influence on America and Montana we have to go back to a good friend of his, Mike Mansfield.

Mansfield had been born in 1903. He joined the Navy in 1917, worked in the Butte mines starting in 1922, went to school in Missoula starting in 1931, got married later that year, got his B.A. in 1933, his M.A. the following year, ran for the U.S. House in 1940, was defeated in the primary, ran again in 1942 and won both the primary and the general. Mansfield’s 24-year congressional career had begun.

In his book Montana Mavericks, John Morrison called Mansfield a man of principle who respected the opposing principles of others; a man of integrity who accorded every other man and woman a rebuttable presumption of honor.

In the 1958 election Mansfield had won with 76.2% of the vote. His margin of victory was bigger than that of any other senator outside the South, Morrison tells us.

The 1960 Election

Zales Ecton had first been elected to the U.S. Senate in 1946, the year that Democratic giant Burton Wheeler had been defeated in the primary by Democratic firebrand Leif Erickson. Erickson didn’t have what it took to carry the general and Ecton’s six-year Senate career began.

Every two years since 1942 Mike Mansfield had had to defend his First Congressional Seat. It was a pain, especially with the distance he had to travel from Washington. Often Maureen would campaign for him in Montana so he wouldn’t need to return so much, especially when there was work to do in Congress. In 1952 he decided he’d had enough, and challenging Zales Ecton for the state’s first senate seat seemed a clear choice.

Mansfield ran unopposed in the primary and got more than 74,000 votes. Ecton also ran unopposed in his primary, getting over 71,000 votes. Come November the two men went at it and in the end Mansfield got 133,109 votes to Ecton’s 127,360 votes, with progressive candidate Larry Price taking 1,828 votes. So it was Mansfield with nearly 51% of the votes to Ecton’s 48%.

Mansfield had successfully made the jump and now he’d only have to worry about elections every six years instead of every two. It must have been a relief. Something else that must have been a relief were the Democrats’ prospects come the 1960 election. By that time the nation had been living under the Eisenhower presidency for nearly eight years, though both houses of Congress had been under firm Democratic control. Could the Democrats take control of it all in 1960, winning Congress again as well as the White House? That was the goal, and Mansfield would do his part.

In the 1960 race for President, Mansfield threw his support behind Kennedy even though he probably should have supported Johnson, considering Mansfield was #2 to LBJ in the Senate.

From left to right, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Mansfield, JFK, and Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois in 1963

Mansfield had known Kennedy since 1953, when both had moved over to the Senate from the House following the 1952 elections. Both men were Irish Catholics; both were progressive Democrats with a similar political outlook. The big difference was in upbringing and area. Kennedy had been brought up in a glitz and glamour world on the East Coast. Mansfield had grown up an orphan, sent to Montana from New York to live with relatives after his mother had died in 1910.

Kennedy was living off a $10 million trust fund set up by his father. Mansfield was more than content to live off his $15,000 Senate salary, the most he’d ever made before, and which was augmented by the $5,000 salary Maureen earned while working in his office.

Mansfield biographer Don Oberdorfer gives us a look at the relationship between these two men:

According to his brother Robert, John Kennedy ‘loved’ Mansfield and considered him a loyal friend even when there were occasional disappointments in Mansfield’s political performance. He gladly sponsored Mansfield’s trips abroad and gave serious consideration to his advice on foreign policy. Mansfield, a loner who did not develop many close friendships, developed an unusually warm relationship of trust and confidence with Kennedy. In late 1963 Mansfield played a key role in saving the President from a White House sex scandal that could have devastated Kennedy’s reputation shortly before an assassin ended his life.

––––––––

Kennedy had come to national attention in 1956 after he made a strong but unsuccessful bid for the vice presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention held in Chicago that year. LBJ had asked Mansfield to go for that position but he declined and actively supported Kennedy.

In the end Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee got the nod but Mansfield had earned even more respect from Kennedy. Your star is just beginning to shine, Kennedy wrote to him in a letter, and the future of the Democratic Party will be tied to it more securely.

In 1960 the presidential race was wide open, what with Eisenhower termed-out, and a total of nine Democrats ran in the primaries. The leading three were Kennedy, Herbert Humphrey, and Johnson. The thing with Johnson is that he didn’t participate in the primaries that year. Humphrey did and Kennedy bested him at every turn. Things started off on March 8 in New Hampshire, which Kennedy took easily since he was the only one running.

Wisconsin on April 5 was another matter, and Kennedy’s true test. He pulled it off, however, winning with 56% to Humphrey’s 44%. After that the contest was done for the most part. Kennedy continued to rack up victories and by the Los Angeles convention on July 11, Kennedy was the clear frontrunner and expected nominee. A week before the convention started, however, LBJ and Adlai Stevenson both declared that they were now candidates. Stevenson was particularly worrisome, as he’d won the Democratic nomination in 1952 and 1956.

Johnson challenged Kennedy to a debate in Texas and Kennedy, most observed, won it. When the voting at the convention came, Kennedy beat out Johnson nearly 2-to-1. He then chose Johnson as his running mate.

There’s been a lot of speculation as to why Johnson was chosen. Many think that Kennedy wanted the southern votes that Johnson could bring. Some figured it was Johnson’s knowledge of yet another JFK sexual affair. Others considered Johnson to be an old hack machine politician, however, someone that would be anathema to JFK’s supporters.

That opinion was held by Kenneth O’Donnell, perhaps Kennedy’s closest confidant in the White House, who wrote a book in 1972 called "Johnny We Hardly Knew Ye": Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy in which he wrote of a time when Kennedy took him into a White House bathroom and told him:

I’m not going to die in office. So the Vice-Presidency doesn’t mean anything. I’m thinking of something else, the leadership in the Senate. If we win, it will be by a small margin, and I won’t be able to live with Lyndon Johnson as the leader of a small majority in the Senate. Did it occur to you that if Lyndon Johnson becomes the Vice-President, I’ll have Mike Mansfield as the leader in the Senate, somebody I can trust and depend on?

––––––––

And so it turned out. Historian Michael Malone tells us that after the election Mansfield rose to a position of invincible strength. Kennedy won it 49.7% to 49.5%, just under 113,000 votes separating Kennedy from Nixon. Despite losing twenty-one seats in the House, Democrats kept control of it, and they kept their huge lead in the Senate too, despite losing one seat. Mansfield would rise and he did, going from Majority Whip under Lyndon B. Johnson to President of the Senate when LBJ became Vice President in 1961.

Majority Leader Mansfield

Newly-elected President Kennedy called Mansfield himself on November 11, three days after the election, and told Mansfield he was on top of his list for a new majority leader, now that Lyndon Johnson had to step down to fulfill his duties as Vice President. Kennedy wanted his legislative agenda to be introduced and pushed by Mansfield.

The only other major candidate was Hubert Humphrey, who lacked the necessary support among southern Democrats. Still, when Mansfield was elected Majority Leader he chose Humphrey as Majority Whip.

It took awhile for Mansfield to fall into the position of majority leader, largely because Johnson refused to give it up. He continued to occupy the majority leader’s luxurious office suite and actually attempted to continue running the Senate’s Democratic caucus, we’re told.

Mansfield was happy to take Kennedy up on his offer, but had a harder time getting his ideas across to his Senate colleagues...especially Johnson. When Mansfield let it be known that Johnson wanted to continue to chair the Democratic caucus as vice president he met an eruption of opposition that soared to what one participant called ‘a crescendo of denunciation, sarcasm and indignation.’

Johnson was both surprised and embarrassed that several longtime members of his senatorial inner circle joined in the general criticism. Their criticism was justified in that the executive and legislative branches were supposed to remain separate. Johnson seemed to have forgotten that and the Party put him in his place.

The event was a stunning manifestation of Johnson’s loss of legislative power as he shifted to the feckless post of vice president, Oberdorfer tells us. Deeply humiliated, Johnson rarely attended a Senate Democratic meeting after that. The Texan had been put in his place, and he was quickly coming to realize he didn’t like that place much at all. The savvy political wheeler and dealer had been outdone. He was now an afterthought, a has-been, and a powerful player that’d been, with his own permission, relegated to a position of obscurity, futility, and nothingness. He didn’t like it, didn’t like it one bit.

JFK and LBJ in July 1960

Eventually Johnson stepped aside from these duties as member complaints grew, though Mansfield was never one to voice them. That might have had something to do with his opinion that there should be no arm twisting and high pressuring, which he didn’t believe in.

Still, one has to wonder if there was resentment from Johnson against Mansfield. Mansfield had been chosen by Johnson as majority whip in 1957, after all, largely because he got along well with the conservative senators from the South and Southwest who then dominated the senate and its leadership positions. Would he continue to get along with Johnson? That remained to be seen.

The Kennedy-Mansfield Agenda

Mansfield got to work building a coalition of Democrats from the North and West and liberal Republicans to get Kennedy’s agenda underway. He worked with people and got rid of night sessions that Johnson had favored as a way to wear opponents down. Mansfield thought letting members go and have dinner with their families was more important.

Mansfield himself was a workhorse, putting in 15-hour days that started at 6:30 AM. Staff arrived at 8 AM and Mansfield had already read and sorted the mail. Montana also developed a strong relationship with Vermont at this time, as Mansfield had breakfast nearly every morning with the green mountain state’s Senator George Aiken. Oberdorfer gives us an idea of what Mansfield did during this time:

During the 1,000 days of the Kennedy administration, Mansfield helped enact legislation fortifying education, providing aid to impoverished areas, protecting reciprocal trade, raising the minimum wage, improving infrastructure and public housing, combating water pollution, creating the Peace Corps, and advancing the goal of equal pay for women.

––––––––

Further legislative accomplishments under Kennedy included tax reduction, the creation of the Alliance for Progress to aid Latin America, and the creation of the national educational television and communications satellite organizations, among others.

Another key measure that Mansfield pushed for and got passed was the nuclear test-ban treaty. It was in 1945 that the US had dropped two atomic bombs on Japan. In 1952 the US developed a hydrogen bomb and began testing it.

It wasn’t until 1959 that radioactive deposits were found in samples of milk and wheat that came from the United States. People had already started to wonder, and that was a big reason why nuclear testing was suspended from 1958 to 1961, when the Soviets tested their first hydrogen bomb. Talk had been around since 1955 about banning nuclear tests, one reason being the contamination that could get into food, and which was now happening. So it was that the two nations met in September 1963 and signed the Treaty of Moscow to end testing the following month.

Kennedy Signing the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, October 1963

Mansfield was becoming instrumental in foreign affairs, but he never forgot where he came from. Despite the boost in his Washington leadership position, and political power, Mansfield continued to give high priority to Montana affairs and was always ready to meet any visitor or group that travelled to Washington from the faraway state, often greeting each person by name as an old friend.

Mansfield knew how to keep his seat. In home state politics, Malone writes, he carefully skirted the hot issues and factional fights that destroyed so many other ambitious young politicians.

Mansfield also did a very good job bringing home money to Montana. In October 1960, for instance, he sent out a newsletter reporting that Montana received $280 million in federal expenditures. Agriculture and military spending at the state’s two large Air Force bases were leading the lists. He also made sure to point out the state had only paid $144 million in federal taxes the previous year.

Laos in the 60s

Mansfield had travelled to Asia as a young man in the Navy and he’d studied and taught about the area while in Montana. He was viewed as an expert, and Kennedy latched onto that.

By the end of the 1950s America had given $300 million in aid to Laos, or $1,500 for every Laotian, and that in a country where per capital income was $50 a year. By March 1961 it seemed that the US would get more involved in Laos if it was deemed necessary to stop the spread of Communism. The reason for that was that Laos was doing badly against communist freedom fighters in the country that were sick of French-influence on their rule.

On March 22 Mansfield wrote to Kennedy, telling him that the Domino Theory he was basing his Laotian policy decision on was losing favor. It had not proven accurate and may be less valid than just a few years ago.

What Kennedy was getting at was SEATO, or the South East Asian Treaty Organization. The organization had first been floated with the 1954 Manila Pact and was created in February 1955, largely at the behest of Eisenhower’s secretary of state, John Foster Dulles. The organization’s aim was simple – stop the spread of communism in Asia, something that America was deathly afraid of because of their Domino Theory idea that if one country went communist, others would fall to the economic and governmental system as well.

Despite Mansfield’s concerns that the Domino Theory was false, by April 27 it looked like Kennedy would expand into Laos. He called a high-level meeting that day, and most agreed with him. Finally Mansfield spoke up, saying the worst possible mistake we could make would be to intervene there. He went on to say that the Chinese Communists would come in and we would face a situation far worse than Korea, a war that’d never officially ended though it’d been at a stalemate for nearly eight years by that time.

At that point it was suggested by Admiral Arleigh Burke that nuclear weapons could be used to stop the Chinese. Mansfield spoke up more forcefully in dissent at that point. After that the other congressional leaders in attendance voiced their concerns over American involvement, a prolonged conflict far from home, and the overall cost, in both men and money.

The meeting ended but on May 1 Mansfield had a private meeting with Kennedy where he gave him his 6-page report on what he thought about the Laos situation. By May 16 the UN got involved in the Laos problems and the US was off the hook. Without Mansfield’s thoughts on the issue, America could have faced a far worse situation in Southeast Asia than we eventually did.

The Buildup to Vietnam

Laos wasn’t the only hot spot for communism in Asia, and Vietnam was shaping up to turn into quite the quagmire for America...though few at the time saw it. Mansfield, however, was one. Mansfield opposed American involvement in Vietnam from the earliest days, though he still condemned communism around the world. He had a willing ear in the president.

We know that Kennedy and Mansfield were extremely close. They had forty-two meetings in 1961, fifty-three in 1962, and fifty in 1963. The last meeting they had together was on November 20, 1963, just a day before Kennedy flew to Dallas.

Kennedy accompanied Mansfield to Montana in September 1963, visiting Mansfield’s home in Great Falls. Something else that was in Great Falls was a wing of the Strategic Air Command at Malmstrom.

After WWII, Great Falls’ East Base played a support role for Ladd Field in Alaska. In 1947 the base started being called Great Falls Air Force Base and in 1948 the base played a leading part in the Berlin Airlifts. In 1956 the base saw its third and final name change, to Malmstrom. It was named after Colonel Einar Malmstrom, whose T-33 crashed approximately one mile west of the airport at Gore Field in 1953.

Colonel Einar Axel Malmstrom, 1953

In July 1962 Malmstrom Air Force Base had become the nation’s first operative Minuteman intercontinental ballistic nuclear missile site (ICBM), with 150 nukes located there by the following summer.

Kennedy spoke to the students at Great Falls High School, telling them that Montana is a long way from Washington, and it is a long way from the Soviet Union, and it is 10,000 miles from Laos. He then launched into the state’s need for the most powerful nuclear missiles systems in the world so that it could do its part to protect the nation.