Gentleman from Indiana

Two days before the opening of the Republican National Convention, Wendell Willkie, formerly of Elwood, Ind., blew into Philadelphia. He announced to newsmen: "My campaign headquarters are in my hat. Be sure to put it down that I'm having a swell time." Talking all the way, followed by a curious crowd, he strode down Broad St. until he reached convention headquarters at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel. There, in the lobby, the upstart Presidential candidate was almost mobbed.

Only six weeks before, Wendell Willkie, president of Commonwealth & Southern Corp., had officially started his campaign. Launched by groups of ardent political amateurs, his campaign had become a political children's crusade.

But there was no time to lose. Mr. Willkie rolled up his sleeves. Business already knew him as a supersalesman; politics was soon to find it out. He made a speech to well-scrubbed Philadelphia Main Liners at the staid Academy of Music. He ordered fried chicken for G. 0. P. Negroes. He invited himself to a caucus of Kansans, had breakfast with Candidate James's hog-tied Pennsylvanians, and began raiding every delegation in sight, loose or tied.

Actually there were more Willkie offices in town than even he could get under his size 7 3/4 hat. Volunteer workers had opened several. And in the plush and marble Benjamin Franklin Hotel, where Candidate Taft had his elegant headquarters in the ballroom and on two additional floors. Willkie headquarters had been established in a small suite of rooms on the 16th floor. There he arrayed himself, big and burly in a blue suit, charging from one room to another, standing hour after hour answering newsmen, posing for photographers, meeting spectators, delegates, anybody. Even when he dashed out to a corner drugstore for a cheese sandwich, newsmen interviewed him as he perched on a stool. A reporter talked to him while he took a bath.

His hearty voice began to grate with constant wear till it sounded like someone shucking corn. He proclaimed: "You'll hear me called a New Dealer and a Democrat. If there's one thing I have done it's fight the New Deal. Why, some of these other fellows who call themselves Republicans were selling off the regalia while I was defending the lodge." To a statement from 40 Republican Congressmen which hinted that he was "unavailable" because he was a neophyte Republican, onetime Democrat Willkie retorted in a favorite phrase: "That's a lot of spinach." He had made no commitments,. he was making none. How did he expect to be nominated then? Barked Mr. Willkie cockily: "If I don't get the nomination, it won't be worth anything anyhow."

In the background was tiny, shy, astonished Mrs. Willkie, of whom Indiana Congressman Charles Halleck, Willkie's nominator, remarked admiringly: "She's plain vanilla." Anxiously she watched her husband sweat through shirts every few hours, while his broad face grew haggard, the shadows under his eyes dark, his smile strained. At one conference he almost collapsed, was rushed off to bed. He slept an hour, came back for more.

The Willkie disorganization of amateurs did their best. Politically speaking, their best was none too good. But by the Convention's second day, a few interested professionals had tiptoed out of the tall timber, taken a look, listened, pledged their cold political steel.

Wednesday night, a weary Willkie flopped down beside the radio to hear Halleck's nominating speech. He listened while Halleck pleaded his cause, told the story of Wendell Willkie, who had been born 48 years ago to a lawyer mother and a lawyer father in Elwood, Ind., now wanted to be President. This Willkie boy had worked as a harvest hand in Minnesota, in the oil fields of Texas, had run a tent hotel in a Colorado boom town, worked as a migrant laborer in California. He had gone to Indiana University, been admitted to the bar, married pretty Edith Wilk, an Indiana girl. He had gone to war in France. He had returned to practice law, become the head of billion-dollar Commonwealth & Southern Corp. . . . Gravely Mr. Willkie listened. Halleck had left out some of the story. His grandparents, nonconformists, had fled from Germany a hundred years ago, political exiles. Their name: Willcke. Wendell ("Win") Willkie had not been a model boy. He had tipped over neighbors' privies, painted his class numerals on the ceiling in high school, spent a night in jail after a football riot. In college he had been known as a radical, a disciple of Teddy Roosevelt, of Fighting Bob La Follette. His classmates had chosen him senior orator. . . . Halleck's voice came over the radio: "There's a man big enough to be President of the U. S."

Willkie flashed a broad grin when he heard the demonstration start and the galleries begin to chant: "We want Willkie." Then he ducked downstairs for a conference with ex-Governor Alf M. Landon of Kansas, who reportedly said to him: "If you're still in there pitching on the fourth or fifth ballot I'm with you."

Thursday evening, with a few friends, reporters, some curious strangers, he listened to the balloting broadcast from Convention Hall. Mrs. Willkie had gone to the hall, disguised in a new wide-brimmed hat, a pair of dark glasses. Nervously the gentleman from Indiana rubbed his hands with a big handkerchief, pushed his fingers through his thick, still dark, rumpled hair. He had shaken at least 7,500 hands.

At the end of each ballot, more people crowded in. One admirer, who had already begun to celebrate, hovered over Mr. Willkie, repeating: "What a man! What a man!"

In the narrow bedlam Mr. Willkie tried to concentrate, wrote down the votes, ballot by ballot, State by State. On the fifth, Kansas came in with all its 18. Someone shouted, "You're in!" A radio crew elbowed through the crowd with a microphone. Policemen appeared, wanted to know who was who. If Mr. Willkie was really going to be the nominee, they had to bodyguard him. Mr. Willkie added up the tally on the fifth.

On the sixth, as State after State began rolling over to him, photographers got their cameras ready, flash bulbs set. Illinois shifted heavily, Michigan came, Missouri, Oklahoma, Virginia -- it was all over. He had been nominated for President of the U. S. Mr. Willkie, formerly of Elwood, Ind. rose; someone pushed him toward a microphone in an adjoining room, and he said in a subdued voice: "I'm overwhelmed. I'm deeply grateful. . . . Now I want to go and join my family."

Mrs. Willkie, who had fled from the Convention Hall after the fifth ballot, hurried to the Warwick Hotel, where the Willkies and their son Philip had rooms. At 1 :30 a.m., a big, disheveled man, fighting his way through cheering mobs, arrived, embraced her.

Next day, out at Convention Hall, after the G. 0. P. had picked Charles McNary of Oregon for his running mate (see p. 16), Mr. Willkie appeared in person. He had prepared no speech. On the way out, he had turned over some sentences in his mind. With Mrs. Willkie he walked down the centre aisle, while the band blared his theme song Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho! It's Back to Work We Go, Republicans cheered, balloons and confetti rained down from the galleries. Said Wendell Willkie, shaking his big head: "Forty-eight days, and only forty-eight days ago, I started out to preach to the American people the doctrine of unity, the doctrine of the destiny of America. . . . The cause is great. We must win. We cannot fail if we stand together in one united fight." Added Mr. Willkie of Elwood, Ind.: "Now I'm going to sleep for a week!"

When Mr. Willkie was nominated, newsmen dashed to the vicinity of the Willkie apartment at 1010 Fifth Ave., Manhattan, to find out what the neighbors thought, and what the neighbors looked like. Burbled Mrs. Benjamin Friedland: "He is a perfectly marvelous man." Said Tommy Rolla, who delivers groceries to the Willkie door: "Never met him. Mrs. Willkie? Okay!"

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