Homer Earl Capehart (June 6, 1897 – September 3, 1979) was an American businessman and politician from
Indiana
Indiana () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th s ...
.
After serving in the
United States Army
The United States Army (USA) is the land warfare, land military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army o ...
during
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, he became involved in the manufacture of record players and other products. Capehart later served 18 years in the
U.S. Senate
The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States.
The composition and pow ...
as a
Republican
Republican can refer to:
Political ideology
* An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law.
** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...
from Indiana. Initially an isolationist on foreign policy, he took a more internationalist stance in later years; he retired after a narrow defeat for a fourth term in
1962
Events January
* January 1 – Western Samoa becomes independent from New Zealand.
* January 3 – Pope John XXIII excommunicates Fidel Castro for preaching communism.
* January 8 – Harmelen train disaster: 93 die in the wor ...
.
Early life
Capehart was born in
Algiers, Indiana, in
Pike County, the son of Susan (Kelso) and Alvin T. Capehart, a
tenant farmer
A tenant farmer is a person (farmer or farmworker) who resides on land owned by a landlord. Tenant farming is an agricultural production system in which landowners contribute their land and often a measure of operating capital and management, ...
. During he enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1917, served in the
infantry
Infantry is a military specialization which engages in ground combat on foot. Infantry generally consists of light infantry, mountain infantry, motorized infantry & mechanized infantry, airborne infantry, air assault infantry, and mar ...
and
supply corps, and was discharged as a
sergeant in 1919.
[
]
Business career
Capehart attained fame as the father of the jukebox
A jukebox is a partially automated music-playing device, usually a coin-operated machine, that will play a patron's selection from self-contained media. The classic jukebox has buttons, with letters and numbers on them, which are used to sele ...
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 Philo Farnsworth's Farnsworth Television and Radio Company in 1939. 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 Rudolph Wurlitzer Company, usually referred to as simply Wurlitzer, is an American company started in Cincinnati in 1853 by German immigrant (Franz) Rudolph Wurlitzer. The company initially imported stringed, woodwind and brass instruments ...
. The entire company was eventually bought by Wurlitzer.
Political career
Capehart's career in the music industry made him wealthy and provided a path to the national political stage. 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 U.S. Senate in 1944
Events
Below, the events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix.
January
* January 2 – WWII:
** Free French General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny is appointed to command French Army B, part of the Sixth United States Army Group in Nor ...
, narrowly defeating Henry Schricker, going on to win subsequent victories in 1950
Events January
* January 1 – The International Police Association (IPA) – the largest police organization in the world – is formed.
* January 5 – Sverdlovsk plane crash: ''Aeroflot'' Lisunov Li-2 crashes in a snowstorm. All 19 ...
against Alexander M. Campbell and in 1956
Events
January
* January 1 – The Anglo-Egyptian Condominium ends in Sudan.
* January 8 – Operation Auca: Five U.S. evangelical Christian missionaries, Nate Saint, Roger Youderian, Ed McCully, Jim Elliot and Pete Fleming, ar ...
against Claude R. Wickard. When first elected to the Senate at the height of World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
, Capehart supported efforts to compromise with the Japanese on terms of surrender in the summer of 1945 when minority leader Wallace H. White, Jr.
Wallace Humphrey White Jr. (August 6, 1877March 31, 1952) was an Politics of the United States, American politician and Republican Party (United States), Republican leader in the United States Congress from 1917 until 1949. White was from the U.S ...
stated that the war might end sooner if President
President most commonly refers to:
*President (corporate title)
* President (education), a leader of a college or university
* President (government title)
President may also refer to:
Automobiles
* Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ...
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
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
, accusing Truman and General Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; ; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was an American military officer and statesman who served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, ...
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, 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 Kennedy and his New Frontier
The term ''New Frontier'' was used by Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy in his acceptance speech in the 1960 United States presidential election to the Democratic National Convention at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum as the ...
programs, such as Medicare and the Peace Corps
The Peace Corps is an independent agency and program of the United States government that trains and deploys volunteers to provide international development assistance. It was established in March 1961 by an executive order of President John F ...
. 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
Kenneth Spicer Wherry (February 28, 1892November 29, 1951) was an American businessman, attorney, and politician. A member of the Republican Party, he served as a U.S. Senator from Nebraska from 1943 until his death in 1951; he was the minority ...
of Nebraska
Nebraska () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by South Dakota to the north; Iowa to the east and Missouri to the southeast, both across the Missouri River; Kansas to the south; Colorado to the sout ...
, legislation for building military family housing in the post-World War II era, when there were critical shortages of such housing. His support of public housing for veterans was part of his support of a strong defense, which he considered a legitimate use of public money. However, he opposed social welfare programs 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 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 Johnson. Capehart voted in favor of the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960
It is also known as the "Year of Africa" because of major events—particularly the independence of seventeen African nations—that focused global attention on the continent and intensified feelings of Pan-Africanism.
Events
January
* Jan ...
, but did not vote on the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Capehart was also an advocate of clean air legislation, and briefly served on the with Kennedy, Barry Goldwater, and Karl Mundt.
Later life
In the 1962
Events January
* January 1 – Western Samoa becomes independent from New Zealand.
* January 3 – Pope John XXIII excommunicates Fidel Castro for preaching communism.
* January 8 – Harmelen train disaster: 93 die in the wor ...
election, Capehart was narrowly defeated by 34-year-old Birch Bayh
Birch Evans Bayh Jr. (; January 22, 1928 – March 14, 2019) was an American Democratic Party politician who served as U.S. Senator from Indiana from 1963 to 1981. He was first elected to office in 1954, when he won election to the India ...
. 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 scandal
The Watergate scandal was a major political scandal in the United States involving the administration of President Richard Nixon from 1972 to 1974 that led to Nixon's resignation. The scandal stemmed from the Nixon administration's contin ...
, he became increasingly critical of President Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...
.
Capehart died at age 82 at St. Vincent Hospital in Indianapolis in 1979 and is buried at its Crown Hill Cemetery
Crown Hill Cemetery is a historic rural cemetery located at 700 West 38th Street in Indianapolis, Marion County, Indiana. The privately owned cemetery was established in 1863 at Strawberry Hill, whose summit was renamed "The Crown", a high point ...
.
He is honored (along with Indiana Senator Sherman Minton
Sherman "Shay" Minton (October 20, 1890 – April 9, 1965) was an American politician and jurist who served as a U.S. senator from Indiana and later became an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States; he was a member of the ...
) in the Minton-Capehart Federal Building near the Indiana World War Memorial Plaza
The Indiana World War Memorial Plaza is an urban feature and war memorial located in downtown Indianapolis, Indiana, United States, originally built to honor the veterans of World War I. and (PDF) It was conceived in 1919 as a location for the na ...
in downtown Indianapolis. His name is also memorialized in the Capehart Room in the Old Dorm Block of Reed College
Reed College is a private liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus in the Eastmoreland neighborhood, with Tudor-Gothic style architecture, and a forested canyon nature preserve at ...
, which once contained a record player that Capehart had donated to the college.
Both his son Thomas C. Capehart and daughter-in-law were killed aboard Avianca Flight 671 on January 21, 1960.
References
Further reading
*
*
*
External links
US Senate biography
*
*
Indiana History
– Homer Capehart papers
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Capehart, Homer E.
1897 births
1979 deaths
People from Pike County, Indiana
Indiana Republicans
American Lutherans
United States Army personnel of World War I
Republican Party United States senators from Indiana
Wurlitzer
Burials at Crown Hill Cemetery
20th-century American politicians
20th-century Lutherans
United States Army soldiers