Historic Quote: “I’ve had all the shooting I can take for one day.” – Iowa Congressman Ben Jensen to his Tennessee colleague Clifford Davis. The two had been sharing a hospital room after being wounded in the U.S. Capitol shooting and were arguing over whether they should listen to “Raw Hide” on the radio (as Davis wanted) or music. Jensen got his way.
The recent shooting on an Alexandria, Virginia baseball field evokes memories of another awful event – the shooting of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords. The Tucson event had multiple shootings whereas thankfully, the Alexandria episode had zero. But both had similarities in that a member of Congress had sustained life-threatening wounds which led to a national debate and accusations that the overheated rhetoric was to blame. In actuality, both shootings were carried out by a mentally ill person whose goal was to kill as many people as possible.
There was another shooting that impacted Capitol Hill more than four decades ago. On March 1, 1954, four Puerto Rican nationalists gunned down five members of Congress. Astonishingly, all survived. The House had been voting on whether to advance a Mexican labor bill and in those days, a teller called the names of each of the 435 members prior to their recording their votes. The vote was at the midpoint and 254 members were on the floor. Had more been present, the chamber would have been more densely populated which almost certainly would have meant more casualties or deaths. But just as the Alexandria shooting left one Congressman, Louisiana Republican Steve Scalise, battling for his life, the ’54 carnage seriously impacted the future of a Michigan Republican named Alvin Bentley, whose condition was so serious that, in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, it was unknown whether he’d live or die.
The assailants – Lolita Lebron, Rafael Miranda, Irving Flores Rodriguez and Andres Figueroa Cordero were Puerto Rican nationalists, part of the same group that tried to assassinate President Harry S. Truman four years earlier. Their cause was anger over the new Constitution that gave the U.S. latitude over Puerto Rico’s affairs. The four wanted complete independence for the island.
Lebron as the lone woman was the most infamous of the quartet. The New York Times observed that she was dressed “stylishly with high heels and bright red lipstick.” She also apparently expected that she would be killed on the spot and when arrested, was found with a note that read, “My life I give for the freedom of my country. The United States of America are betraying the sacred principles of mankind in their continuous subjugation of my country.” They claimed their actions were no different than the actions Americans had taken against the British during the Revolutionary War.
In the lead-up to the shooting, the four acted casually and methodically. They took a bus to Washington from New York, lunched at Union Station and walked to the Capitol where they were seated in the Ladies Gallery. A Washington Post recap noted that “a security guard asked whether they were carrying cameras; they were not” But they were carrying Luger and Walther semi-automatic pistols which, after getting situated and watching the House proceedings for a time, they emptied on an unsuspecting chamber. Lebron was “holding (the Luger) in her two hands, and waving it wildly.” She then attempted to wrap a Puerto Rican flag around her before being subdued by onlookers, Capitol police and a few brave House members. Another assailant yelled, “Viva Puerto Rico Libre.”
On the floor, The New York Times noted that at the sound of the gunfire, “House members at first thought the sounds were those of firecrackers. But as their colleagues fell or took cover as they heard the slugs hit around them, all realized what was happening.” One, an Alabama Democrat named Frank Boykin, 69, joined many in running toward the exits. That would be hardly unusual except for the fact that most of his other colleagues were hiding behind desks. At that point, somebody yelled out, “Where are you going Boykin?” He replied, “I’m going to get my gun.” The man replied, “Where is your gun, to which Boykin said, “It’s in Alabama.”
Many, including house Majority Leader Leslie Arends, felt splinters from the gunfire. Republican Congressman James Van Zandt of Pennsylvania ran from the floor to the gallery, tackled Lebron and another gunman and grabbed her flag (she bellowed “It’s the flag of my country. Give it to me!”). Down below, two members/physicians Walter Judd of Minnesota and William Neal of West Virginia tended to the wounded, as did a number of pages, including two future Congressmen, 17 year old Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania (who “felt the spray of marble”) and his 16 year old colleague, Bill Emerson of Missouri.
The five wounded members encompassed a broad array of the House membership: junior, senior, Democrat and Republican. They were the following:
Ben Jensen (R-Iowa)
Jensen was the senior member of the five. Describing the shooting, The Des Moines Register said, “Jensen pitched through a door of a cloakroom after a bullet had struck him in the right shoulder.” He had been standing near his Iowa colleagues who helped stretch him out. One fellow Iowan, Karl LeCompte, worried that it “might have been Ben’s heart,” before realizing it was his shoulder.
Jensen was born one of 13 children to Danish immigrants in the rural town of Marion. His birth name was Benton Franklin Jensen and he used the name because his love of history gave him an affinity to the Founding Father. Jensen worked as a yardman and assistant auditor, then served as a First Lieutenant in the First World War before becoming manager of the Green Bay Lumber Company, a company that built brooder houses for baby chicks which were then sold to hatcheries. He was elected to Congress in 1938.
No one would dare mistake Jensen for anything other than a staunch conservative. He boasted about being called, “the watchdog of the Treasury,” and said, “I am proud of that title.” When the House took up the Reclamation Law revision in 1948 and would pay the subsidies, he opposed an amendment measure favored by Speaker Rayburn that would give hydro-electrical power from Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas preference and he derided the proposed transmission program a move toward “government control of all utilities.” In his last year in office, Jensen opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Jensen was legendary for his temper – in fact he once took a swing at his chairman on Appropriations, Democrat Clarence Cannon, himself no shrinking violet. But those who knew him generally found him amenable professionally. Iowa Democrat Neal Smith, elected in 1958, called him “conscientious about his work and desires to do what he believes is right.” Smith called him very cooperative with his own Appropriations requests.
Jensen had won re-election with ease for two decades until 1958, when the farm revolt that took down many of his fellow prairie Republicans allowed him to escape defeat by just 2,500 votes, 51.5-48.9%. Jensen rebounded somewhat and became top Republican of the House Appropriations Committee after the 1960 election when New Yorker John Tabor retired. But by 1964, his luck had run out and as Lyndon Johnson was pummeling Barry Goldwater at the national level, he lost to John Hansen by more than 10,000 votes. In a post-election mortem, Jensen said he “could not overcome those big landslides both at the White House and Statehouse levels.” He said Goldwater, “a man defeated to the degree that he was, cannot claim” a mandate to lead the party. Instead, he spoke glowingly of Richard Nixon as a future face. He visited Nixon in the White house at least once and died in 1971 at age 79.
Clifford Davis (D-Tennessee)
When talking about personal background and politics, Tennessee Democrat Clifford Davis was not a member of Congress whose story should be preserved. When he sought elective office for the first time at the age of 26 – for City Judge, Davis could not win the backing of either his boss, Memphis Mayor Rowlett Paine, or the legendary machine organization headed by Ed Crump. Davis calculated that the only way chance for him to win the election was to court the Ku Klux Klan. Support was granted and Davis won the post (all of the other Klan endorsed candidates lost). The Tennessee encyclopedia of History and Culture noted the win made Davis “the only avowed Klan member to ever win elective office in Memphis.”
It does not appear as though Davis was personally hostile to African-Americans, as his bid for vice-Mayor with Watkins Overon garnered support from both blacks and whites. But near the end of his Congressional career – which began in a 1940 special election when he won a race to succeed Walter Chandler, he was still vocal about thwarting progress for African-Americans. Davis could boast of some major accomplishments throughout his long tenure. The Tennessee Valley Authority Self-Financing Bill and he co-sponsored the Federal-Aid Highway Act.
When the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed, Davis called it “untimely,” adding, “the events (rioting) in Harlem prove it.” Davis vowed to “would vote the same way tomorrow and the South needs a congressman who knows how to represent the views of the South.” At that time, Davis was in the race of his political life against George Grider, a pipe-smoking, World War II naval officer and well-respected attorney who had much support among the black community. Davis had fallen below 80% only once – in the 1956 general election but that changed in 1962. In that primary, Davis fell under 50% against Ross Pritchard which turned out to be foreboding of a general election that he survived by a mere whisker against Robert James, his Republican opponent. Against Glider in ’64, his luck ran out.
Wayne Dowdy, in his book, Crusades for Freedom: Memphis and the Political Transformationof the… , notes that in predominantly black ward 39, Davis Grider received 358 votes while a mere 55 were cast for Davis.” That was not the only issue Glider used against Davis. The incumbent, he said, had “grown lazy in the job.” Davis attempted to counter by stumping hard for support in rural areas. Grider unseated him by a healthy 9%, 50-41%.
Davis returned to Tennessee where he died in 170 at age 72.
Kenneth Roberts (D-Alabama)
If Davis’s past suggests racial animosity, nothing of the kind was prevalent in the thinking of Kenneth Roberts of Alabama. His family had a long history with African-Americans and Jews, the latter of whom he believed were “the noblest people in the world.” That’s not to say he backed civil rights – he voted with his Southern colleagues to defeat every measure that came up. But he had limits. Behind the scenes, he was believed to have told folks that times were changing and he viewed George Wallace’s standing in the schoolhouse to door to prevent integration childish. But on other issues, he was not only a staunch supporter of an activist federal government but was a champion of causes identified with the liberal wing of the Democratic party at an unusually early time.
Among those causes: backing migrant workers, product liability and Native American Healthcare. His most important legacy may have by pushing through legislation allowing working mothers to deduct expenses for child care, a cause he worked on with Alvin Bentley, his Michigan colleague who was also shot.
Among the five members shot, Roberts was the least seriously wounded – the bullet tore through his leg, but that was by sheer happenstance. The colleague sitting near him, Percy Priest of Tennessee, gave Roberts his neck tie and fountain pen to stop the bleeding and allowing him to crawl to the next room (Roberts’ grateful wife bought Priest a new necktie and fountain pen).
Roberts grew up in rural Alabama, the son of a dry good store clerk. He attended Howard College, then earned his law degree from the University of Alabama. He established a practice in Anniston and Talladega. In 1941, Roberts was elected to the Alabama State Senate but his tenure wouldn’t last long. The reason: World War II. Roberts resigned and served in the Naval Reserves in both the Atlantic and Pacific Theaters. He continued his service as a lieutenant in the reserves. Returning home, he was the Piedmont city attorney and sat on the State Board of Veterans Affairs. He won his Congressional seat in 1950 and, like virtually all of his Southern colleagues in a region where the GOP was dormant if not non-existent, Davis would routinely run unopposed or exceed 80% of the vote. In 1962, he placed third for eight seats as Alabama’s Representative-At-Large.
Roberts’ sponsorship of a deduction for female providers came in response to a conference sponsored by the Children’s Bureau and Women’s Bureau of the Department of Labor. “The conference concluded that these women, many the sole support of their children, required government aid for their children’s care.” In promoting his bill that would allow deductions for mothers earning less than $6,000 a year, Roberts called it “a little hard to reconcile the present insensitive attitude on the part of the government which allows a lawyer to deduct entertainment fees lavished upon a prospective client, a professional golfer to deduct his equipment for tournaments…which will not grant this privilege to the working mother who toils all day in the factory and works for her family in the evening in the hope that her children have a better life.”
Beyond that, Roberts used his chairmanship of the House Health and Safety subcommit¬tee to promote refrigerator safety, The Bounds Law Library of the University of Alabama points out that Roberts “was credited by Ralph Nader as one of the people directly responsible for the national interest in automobile safety.” Finally, Roberts decided that any chances of getting the law enacted would have to be done piecemeal. His first proposal, as Michael Lemov noted in Car Safety Wars: One Hundred Years of Technology, Politics and Death that Roberts introduced a bill that called for the “36,000 automobiles purchased by the General Services Administration for the federal government to be required to meet mandatory safety standards…” Though the House cleared the legislation, the Senate would not until Roberts worked out a compromise with Washington Senator Warren Magnuson in 1964. Educational television also consumed much of his time. But he was thwarted in what was perhaps his most ambitious goal – federal safety standards for automobiles and incurred the enmity of the automobile industry. Roberts was also chair of and the Interstate and Foreign Commerce subcommittee on safety and he used that to fight for legislation on substance labeling, child health.
Initially, 1964 was shaping up to be another routine rout over his Republican opposition, if he would even attract any. Legislatively, he was coming off the biggest success of his legislative career. But while the year proved one of the most for voter approval of an activist federal government, except in Alabama. The Civil Rights Act had just been enacted and voters were revolting by voting for Barry Goldwater over President Lyndon Johnson. Voters made no distinction between the top of the ticket and bottom and ousted five Democratic members of Congress. Roberts was one of them. Defeated by Arthur Andrews, he lost every county by wide margins – Andrews amassed 70% in two and could do no better than the 44% he received in St. Clair County. His daughter Allison Roberts was quoted in the Lemov book as saying, “I remember my mom broke down and cried. My dad just shrugged it off.” But he felt the unpledged system that Wallace had used to keep President Lyndon Johnson from appearing on the ballot had cost him, though the Goldwater sweep because of the backlash over civil rights also undoubtedly played a role.
Roberts was close with President John F. Kennedy and after his assassination, Lyndon Johnson, knowing of his fondness for his predecessor, gave Roberts one of the first Kennedy Silver Dollars.
Roberts led a very active retirement, focusing on the areas he addressed in Congress. Counsel for the Vehicle Equipment Safety Commission. Johnson appointed him to the National Highway Safety Advisory Committee from 1966 to 1970. Allstate Foundation, Physicians for Automotive Safety and American Nurses Association all bestowed on him awards.
By 1989, Roberts was dying but was transported to Maryland .When he was dying, his daughter said she knew he wanted to see the U.S. Capitol again,” and had the ambulance drive past it. Death came days later at age 76. Incidentally, after Wallace was shot while campaigning for president in Maryland, Roberts paid him a visit, telling him he could commiserate with how he was feeling.
George Fallon (D-Maryland)
Fallon, who took a bullet in the leg, would ultimately achieve the highest standing of the five lawmakers, which some would see as appropriate given his height. At 6’2, Fallon was called “The Big Man from Baltimore,” and when he rose to chair the Public Works Committee in Congress, he clearly became a pretty big fish in Washington. Yet he didn’t need a title to become one of the most important lawmakers of his time. Fallon was referred to as a “mild-mannered legislator who rarely ventured onto the floor of the House to speak for any other cause in his 13 terms” and was said by Congress watchers to never hold a grudge when it came to earmarking road related projects for the Congressional districts of other members. As Tom Lewis wrote in Divided Highways: Building the Interstate Highways, Transforming American Life, “Fallon’s blandness endowed him with a capacity to endure tedium and enabled him to have a successful career.” And Duane Cronk, who wrote transportation language, called him, “surprisingly modest. He is courteous, but not suave. He is no orator, and couldn’t make a soap-box speech if he had to. But he is relaxed and congenial, and makes friends easily.”
So committed was Fallon to improving roads that many joked that the “H” in his middle initial stood for “highways” (it was actually “Hyde”). The Baltimore-Washington Express was one such road endeavor but establishing an interstate highway system was his major source of energy (Fallon himself disliked driving on highways strangely enough and would often make the 45 minute commute to Washington by train).
With Al Gore, Sr., Fallon sponsored the Federal-Aid Highway Act. President Eisenhower signed it into law in 1956 and American means of travel would change forever. But the journey took a wild ride and the beginning was not auspicious.
The first version – introduced in 1955, was called the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. Fallon’s means of paying for the bill involved the creation of a highway trust fund, but also a tax on fuel and anything else that made vehicles move (Lewis mentioned trucks, trailers, buses, tires, inner-tubes and recapped tires). But the fuel industry had a fit and launched an angry campaign that Fallon said resulted in 10,000 telegrams arriving on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers defeated the bill 292-123. It was July of 1955 and Speaker Sam Rayburn pronounced the measure dead. But in his 1956 State of the Union, Eisenhower implored lawmakers of the necessity of a highway system and time eased the anger of many of the highway interests. Fallon made the bill palatable by making it “pay-as-you-go.” The bill passed with just 19 dissentions and Fallon made the statement that “not only will every person in the United States benefit from it, but the favorable impact on our economy already is felt.”
As the 1950s turned into the 60s, other projects awaited. Fallon worked on the Port of Baltimore. He sponsored the Clean Waters Restoration Act with Senator Ed Muskie of Maine.
A graduate of the Calvert Business School and John Hopkins University, Fallon’s rise in Democratic Party politics was helped by the recognition of the advertising sign company that his father had founded in 1904 – the Fallon Sign Co. When it started, it grew at a meteoric pace. In 1938, he was on the Democratic state Central Committee of Baltimore and a year after that, he was on the city council. In 1944, he sought a seat in the House and won with 59%. His re-election margins for the rest of the decade were healthy but he struggled somewhat through the 1950s. In ’54, his first vote after the shooting, he mustered just 55% and two years later, in the midst of the Eisenhower landslide, he took just 53.4%. But by 1958, through 1968, his tallies were uneventful – in the general. As early as 1960, Fallon began facing primary challengers that he dispatched comfortably, but not the earth-shattering margins accustomed to entrenched incumbents (the low 60s).
By 1968, the culture was changing and Fallon at 66 might have been detached. He was not a fan of environmental regulation and that garnered him the ire of many in the growing movement. He supported the Vietnam War which certainly did little to endear him with youths. His primary opponent was Joseph Curran, Jr., Fallon squeaked by with 976 votes to spare.
Many think Fallon should have heeded his close scrape and retired in 1970. Meanwhile, a freshman State Representative named Paul Sarbanes was also rejecting advice – leading politicos were urging him to be patient and not risk a promising career by challenging Fallon. But he spotted vulnerabilities and The League of Conservation Voters established its list of “Dirty Dozen,” legislators. Fallon was on it. Sarbanes had cash and hit him for supporting the Vietnam War. In the end, he defeated the incumbent 51-45%.
Fallon returned to Baltimore where he lived another decade. He died in 1980 at age 78.
Alvin Bentley (R-Michigan)
While the injuries of Jensen, Davis, Martin and Fallon were all relatively minor, Alvin Bentley’s was far from it. As a freshman, the Michigan Republican was also the most junior member of the five and the two bullets that struck lodged in his lung and liver, Doctors, after performing surgery that had lasted several hours, rated his chances of survival at only “50-50.” But Bentley had been lucid enough to ask his fellow Michigander, Elford Cederberg, to call his wife. She was pregnant and he didn’t want her to get wind of the incident on the news. Ultimately, Bentley’s bright political future ended not by an assassin’s bullet but by two close statewide losses in the 1960s.
While Bentley did come through and resume his Congressional career after a two month recovery, Kanjorski noted he “was never really the same.” Meanwhile, citizens of Puerto Rico were horrified at what their countrymen had done and The Battle Creek Enquirer noted on his death that he “received about 4,000 letters of sympathy” from residents “and when he recovered he vacationed on the island at the invitation of the island governor.”
Bentley’s early years were governed by both fortune and misfortune. Born in Maine, Bentley’s father was killed in France in World War 1 when Bentley was just three but money wouldn’t be a problem; his grandfather owned the Owosso Manufacturing Company in Michigan. He earned his degree from the University of Michigan and served in the Foreign Service during World War II. During the war, he served in Columbia and Mexico but was in Italy and Hungary post-war. He resigned in 1950 after finding himself, in “finding himself at odds with the foreign policy of the Truman administration.” Two years later, he challenged a Republican incumbent for re-nomination and won by a surprisingly large margin. Though Fred Crawford, had served in the House since 1934, voters nearly ditched him in the 1950 primary, just as he was about to become chair of the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee. His international pedigree experience was a prime reason House leaders placed Bentley on the Foreign Affairs Committee, the only freshman to do so.
Bentley was a loyal Republican vote but it would be a mistake to call him a down-the-line conservative (he had actually worked with Ken Roberts on the tax deductions for child care). But he was virulently anti-communist and he urged support for “any nation trying to overthrow a communist government” which included Hungary in 1956. He was against recognition of Communist China by the U.S. government and Russian denomination of the Baltic States. He advocated severing relations with Cuba.
Joe McCarthy had stumped for Bentley before a gathering of Saginaw Young Republicans in 1952 and Bentley reciprocated by supporting the Un-American Activities Committee. But he was embarrassed somewhat by revelations that his new wife, Arvilla Bently, had exceeded the legal limit by giving him $7,000– then skipping the country to the Bahama’s under the name Mary Peters before the Senate Ethics Committee was to serve her with a warrant (McCarthy had used the money for commodity speculation).
An Enduring Gift: The Bentley Historical Library, Keeper of Michigan’s History, noted that he was “one of the earliest users of the Congressional questionnaire. Every January, just prior to the opening of a new Congressional session, he polled the people of his district on issues likely to come before the House.” Bentley also made use of the radio – and at a very early time the television, to get his views out to constituents. As a result, his re-elections were a cinch.
Bentley faced no imminent electoral danger but in 1960, decided to challenge Democratic Senator Pat McNamara who was seeking a second term. Though Bentley spent $1.3 million, he could not oust McNamara. Two years later, he tried to return to the House by way of an At-Large House seat that would be chosen by the entire Michigan electorate.
Post Congress, Bentley served as a delegate to the Michigan Constitutional Convention. He chaired the Education Committee which for Michigan, his ultimate legacy may be creation of the State Department of Education. In 1966, Governor George Romney appointed him to a vacant seat on Michigan’s Board of Regents. But a disease impacting the central nervous system afflicted him that year and ultimately confined him to a wheelchair. He died on a vacation in 1969 at age 50.
If any member of Congress was the hero of the day, it was Pennsylvania Republican Jimmy Van Zandt who played a major role in subduing the assailants.
Van Zandt had served in both World Wars – he had enlisted in the Navy during his senior year of high school to serve in the First and actually resigned his seat in Congress to continue to serve in the second (he had been stationed in the Pacific and North Atlantic before-hand). In between, he was commander of both the Altoona post and the Pennsylvania chapter of the Veterans of Foreign Wars where he traveled the nation in search of new recruits. This result in his being awarded the Distinguished Service Medal by that organization. In World War II, Van Zandt’s primary role was to command a ship and he eventually received the Bronze Star and the Legion of Merit. He continued in Korea – at which time he had returned to Congress and retired rear-Admiral at age 71.
Van Zandt knew the sound of gun shots from the service so, upon hearing them, he crawled to the cloakroom and ran up the stairs to the gallery and, along with a bystander and tourist, wrestled at least one of the gunmen to the floor.
Van Zandt was a lifelong resident of Altoona. After World War 1, he became a district passenger agent for the Pennsylvania Railroad. He won his House seat in 1938 over a two-term incumbent, Don Gingerly, by a solid 57-43% margin. Van Zandt proved enormously popular and, when he sought to reclaim his seat a year after a three-year absence following the war’s conclusion, voters returned him with 66%. Van Zandt never again sweated re-election but gave up his seat to challenge freshman Democratic Senator Joe Clark. He attacked Clark for his alliance with the organization, Americans for Democratic Organization. Clark responded by calling his opponent “trigger happy,” and said that if he had his way, the U.S. would constantly be going to war “unilaterally.” He noted that ADA had been founded by none other than Eleanor Roosevelt. Van Zandt took nearly 49% but could not oust the incumbent.
After his loss, Van Zandt continued his ties to his two chief passions: issues concerning veterans and Congress. The protests that took place during the Vietnam War disenchanted Van Zandt enough that he called them really anti-American…when Americans are in a fight we are there to win and right or wrong it’s our country we stand for.” Governor William Scranton had named him secretary to the Congressional delegation, which Democratic Congressman Joe Gaydos recalls he served, “without pay for years; he loved Pennsylvania. There was no political affiliation when it came to serving Pennsylvania. We looked up to him and had a profound respect for him. He was always active no matter how old he was.’
The veterans facility in Altoona, Pennsylvania bears Van Zandt’s name.
Meanwhile, the four assailants received life sentences that was ultimately converted by President Carter in 1979 as part as a prisoner swap.