Mirror to the Future

Colorado's Democrats last week put forth their idea of what the well-dressed 1944 candidate will wear. Their choice was a bemedaled uniform occupied by a wounded young Air Force Major, Carl Eugen ("Kayo") Wuertele, 30. Major Wuertele (pronounced Wurtell) was at Pearl Harbor when the Japs came over. In 205 combat missions since, he collected five wounds and seven decorations, including the Distinguished Flying Cross. His Flying Fortress, Hel-en-Wings (for his wife, Helen) fought over Midway and Bougainville. In the Solomons, he shot down four Jap planes, had his own left foot nearly shot off.

Earnest, boyish Wuertele convalesced in Denver's Fitzsimmons Hospital. Soon he began limping around to war plants, large & small, on morale assignments. In one year he made 250 appearances, hundreds of acquaintances. Denver already knew him from his football days at the University of Colorado, and from the amateur boxing contests which earned him his nickname. But since Jan. 20, when the Denver County Democratic Assembly unanimously endorsed him for Congress, no candidate has ever been so completely muzzled. Until his discharge from the Army (expected this week), he is forbidden to politick. So Democrats have sheltered him from photographers, have booked no speaking dates, opened no headquarters. They even hustled him off to Wichita to keep him out of sight.

Democrats sorely need a winner in the special election March 7. Until his death in December, Congressman Lawrence Lewis was the lone Colorado Democrat in Congress. The First District is traditionally Republican. The Republicans, with a two-week head start in campaigning, have a strong candidate in Dean M. Gillespie, 59, who grew rich from cheese, oil and trucking, is a political adept.

In this obscure by-election, the nation's politicos could hold a mirror to the future. War Hero Wuertele plumps for servicemen's issues ("If they draft soldiers, why not draft everyone?"). He covers his lack of political and business experience by an engaging candor: "Lots of people ask me questions about problems I don't know anything about. . . . I don't owe anybody anything, so when I figure out what a man ought to do, I can go ahead and do it." To offset the war heroics, Gillespie's backers are trying out the slogan of World War I's nurse Edith Cavell: "Patriotism is not enough."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.