Stuart Symington
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William Stuart Symington (June 26, 1901–December 14, 1988) was a businessman and political figure from Missouri. He served as the first Secretary of the Air Force (from 1947 until 1950) and was a Democratic United States Senator from Missouri (from 1953 until 1976.)
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[edit] Emerson Electric President
Symington was born in Amherst, Massachusetts and grew up in Baltimore, Maryland. He graduated from Yale University in 1923. At Yale he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity and the Elihu Secret Society and served on the board of the Yale Daily News.
In 1923, Symington went to work for an uncle in the shops of the Symington Company of Rochester, New York, manufacturers of malleable iron products. Two years later he formed Eastern Clay Products, Inc., but in 1927 returned to the Symington Company as executive assistant to the president.
Symington resigned in 1930 to become president of the Colonial Radio Corporation. In January 1935, he accepted the presidency of Rustless Iron and Steel Corporation, manufactures of stainless steel, but remained director of Colonial Radio Corporation.
When Rustless Iron and Steel Corporation was sold to the American Rolling Mill Company in 1937, Symington resigned and in 1938, accepted the presidency of Emerson Electric Company in St. Louis, Missouri. During World War II he transformed the company into the world's largest builder of airplane gun turrets.
[edit] First Secretary of the Air Force
He resigned Emerson in 1945 to join the administration of fellow Missourian Harry S. Truman.
His first positions were chairman of the Surplus Property Board (1945), administrator of the Property Administration (1945-1946) and Assistant Secretary of War for Air (1946-1947).
On September 18, 1947, the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force was created and Symington became the first Secretary. Symington had a stormy term as he moved to give the United States Air Force (which previously had been part of the Army) respect. He had numerous public battles with Secretary of Defense James Forrestal. During his tenure there was a major debate and investigation into production of the Convair B-36 Bomber, which was the last of the piston powered bombers at the beginning of the jet age. Symington and others were eventually cleared of any wrongdoing. Major accomplishments included the Berlin Airlift and championing the United States Air Force Academy. Symington resigned in 1950 to protest lack of funding for the Air Force after the Soviets detonated their first atomic bomb. He remained in the administration as chairman of National Security Resources Board (1950-1951) and Reconstruction Finance Corporation Administrator (1951-1952).
[edit] The Annie Lee Moss Case
On March 9, 1954, Ms. Annie Lee Moss went before Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his committee under the accusation that she was a communist spy. Evidence supporting this claim was supposedly given by an undercover FBI agent that could not be cross-examined by Ms. Moss or her counsel. As it became increasingly clear that a horrible mistake had been made, Sen. Symington proclaimed before the packed audience that he believed she was not a communist and had never been, receiving thunderous applause from those present.
[edit] U.S. Senator and candidate for President
At the urging of his father in law James Wolcott Wadsworth, Jr., a Republican U.S. Senator from New York, he ran as a Democrat for U.S. senate in Missouri in 1952.
He was elected in the 1952 and re-elected in 1958, 1964 and 1970 and did not seek a fifth term. He resigned on December 27, 1976, four days before the end of his final term so that his Republican successor John Danforth would have more seniority in the Senate.
Symington was an especially prominent opponent of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, to the vexation of the latter, who nicknamed him "Sanctimonious Stu." Symington took a lead role in condemning McCarthy during the Army-McCarthy Hearings, capitalizing upon his prominence and expertise as a former Secretary of the Air Force.
Symington ran in the 1960 presidential election and won the backing of former President Harry S. Truman, but eventually lost the nomination to Senator John F. Kennedy. Symington, unlike Kennedy or LBJ, refused to speak to segregated audiences in the South, and this hurt his chances. He was considered Kennedy's first choice for Vice President, but was dropped in favor of Texas Senator Lyndon B. Johnson in the politically tight race. He advised President Kennedy as a member of ExComm during the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
During Symington's tenure in the Senate, he was known as an advocate for a strong national defense. He was also a strong supporter of the Air Force Academy and, in fact, helped establish it. Symington was also committed to constituent services, answering letters from Missouri citizens both important, trivial, and sometimes even zany. As an example, Symington once formally requested a report from military sources regarding the possible existence of subterranean superhumans which one of his constituents had become concerned about after reading a fiction book and mistaking it for non-fiction. This and Symington's other Senatorial correspondence and papers were donated to the Western Historical Manuscripts Collection-Columbia (on the University of Missouri campus) in 2002, and are now available to the general public.
His son James W. Symington served in the U.S. House from Missouri's Second Congressional District from 1969 to 1977. His cousin Fife Symington was Governor of Arizona from 1991 to 1997. His grandson Stuart Symington, of the same name, is in the U.S. State Department.
He died in New Canaan, Connecticut and is buried in a crypt in Washington National Cathedral.
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| Preceded by none |
United States Secretary of the Air Force 1947—1950 |
Succeeded by Thomas K. Finletter |
| Preceded by James Kem |
U.S. Senator (Class 1) from Missouri 1953–1976 |
Succeeded by John C. Danforth |
