Senator McCarthy Dies After Brief Illness

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28268, 4 May 1957, Page 11

Senator McCarthy Dies After Brief Illness

(Rec. 7 p.m.) WASHINGTON, May 2. Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, the Republican representative for Wisconsin and the key figure in the Senate sub-com-mittee investigations into communism in the early 1950’5, died at Bethesda Naval Hospital tonight. He was 47. Senator McCarthy had been in hospital five days with a liver inflammation, acute hepatitis. Senator McCarthy’s committee hearings led to a Senate vote of condemnation, as recommended by a special committee headed by Senator Arthur Watkins (Republican, Utah). Mr Eisenhower let it be known he was on Senator Watkins’s side, and Senator McCarthy’s star quickly faaed. It had shone brightly in the years before. His influence was vast in the Government and in the nation generally.

The reverberations of his activities as chairman of the Senate Investigations ’ Sub-committee, in particular, were world-wide. Many groups cited him as a symbol of Americanism. Many others, in the United States and abroad, recoiled from him as a symbol of witch-hunting frenzy. He is survived by his wife, who was his Senate assistant, Mrs Jean Kerr McCarthy, and the infant daughter they adopted early this year. Senator McCarthy had been ill for varying periods in the last few years. His death cuts the Republican membership in the Senate to 46, compared with the Democrats’ 49. Senator McCarthy was acclaimed by many as the United States’ foremost hunter of Communists. He was assailed by others as a cynical, ruthless destroyer of reputations. There was a time when Senator McCarthy dominated nearly every political discussion, whipping passions higher than any other American. President Eisenhower, hearing of Senator McCarthy’s death, tonight issued the following statement through his press secretary, Mr James C. Hagerty: “I have just been informed of the sudden passing of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy. “Mrs Eisenhower joins me in extending our profund sympathy to Mrs McCarthy in the grievous personal loss she has sustained.” Mr Hagerty said the President had sent a personal telegram to Mrs McCarthy. This was not made public. Some of Senator McCarthy’s bitterest political opponents tonight paid a tribute to his' “friendly manner.” Senator McCarthy himself was a . surprisingly relaxed, antistuffed shirt, often humorous man in private—a far cry from the stern inquisitor, or the betrayed crusader, which the public saw. His language had a barnyard flavour which the best efforts of his keenly intelligent wife could not affect. Senator McCarthy’s rise to prominence was as swift as his fall. He had been a Judge in Wisconsin, left that post to -become a Marine, resigned from the Marines to run for Senator. In the Senate he was little known until he made a speech at Wheeling, West Virginia, on

February 9, 1950, asserting that he held in his hand the names of card-carrying Communists in the State Department. He kept the spotlight for four turbulent years with investigations that ranged from alleged pro-Communist books in United States libraries overseas to the fate of, Americans held prisoner by the Chinese Communists.