Harry Hines Woodring

Harry Hines Woodring (May 31, 1890 – September 9, 1967) was a U.S. political figure. He was born in 1890 in Elk City, Kansas. He was educated in city and county schools and at sixteen began work as a janitor in the First National Bank of Neodesha, Kansas. He briefly attended business college, which gained him employment as a bookkeeper and assistant cashier of the First National Bank in Elk City. He soon became assistant cashier at the First National Bank of Neodesha. Woodring moved up quickly to become vice president and owner of the bank until he enlisted as a private in the US Army; later commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Tank Corps in World War I. He was elected department commander of the American Legion in Kansas then in 1928 he sold his banking business to enter politics.

Woodring won the Kansas gubernatorial election of 1930 in a controversial three-way race with Republican Frank Haucke and write-in candidate and goat-gland transplantation specialist, Dr. John Brinkley. He served as governor of Kansas from 1931 to 1933. He then married Helen Coolidge and served as Assistant Secretary of War from 1933 to 1936, with supervision over procurement matters. He was promoted and served as Secretary of War under President Franklin Roosevelt from 1936 to 1940. He projected the recommendations of his predecessor for increasing the strength of the Regular Army, National Guard, and the Reserve Corps. During his tenure he directed a revision of mobilization plans to bring personnel and procurement into balance and stressed the need to perfect the initial (peacetime) protective force. An isolationist, he was asked to resign in 1940 after disagreeing publicly with the administration's policy of shipping war materials to Britain. Woodring ran unsuccessfully for Governor of Kansas in 1946, and for the Democratic Party nomination for that post in 1956. He died following a stroke in Topeka, Kansas on September 9, 1967. He is buried at the Mount Hope Cemetery in Topeka, Kansas.

Woodring was the son in law of Massachusetts Senator Marcus A. Coolidge.

References

• Bell, William Gardner (1992). "Harry Hines Woodring". Secretaries of War and Secretaries of the Army. United States Army Center of Military History. CMH Pub 70-12. http://www.history.army.mil/books/Sw-SA/Woodring.htm. 
• Book Reviews From Parameters, Autumn 2006, pp. 124–49.

External links

• Find-A-Grave profile for Harry Hines Woodring