ROOSEVELT'S OPPONENT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23767, 21 September 1940, Page 7 (Supplement)

ROOSEVELT'S OPPONENT

IT was a big day for Elwood, Indiana, the home town of Wendell L. Willkie, when on Saturday, August 17, Mr. Willkie delivered his formal speech of acceptance. of the Republican nomination for President of the United States.

Wendell Willkie was born there in 1892, and the Elwood in which he grew up was the booming Elwood. He may have vague memories of the McKinley celebration, but he surely has more vivid memories of the old swimminghole on Duck Creek, which flows south through town toward the West" Fork of the White River. And he has plenty of schoolday memories, writes Charles E. Crawford, in the New York Times. His father, Herman F. Willkie, was principal of the high school; substantial Elwood residents of to-day recall that when they were in high school they sometimes called him "Hell Fire" Willkie. because he was a disciplinarian and insisted on the youngsters attending to business. Both of Wendell's parents were serious about education; both of them studied law at night, and in due time both were admitted to the Indiana bar: Mrs. Willkie was the first woman in Indiana to have that honour. Wendell is remembered as a good student, an athlete, an outstanding debater and a youngster full of pranks. One of his old schoolmates recalls the rumpus stirred up when Wendell and two companions filched a human skeleton from a classroom and hung it from a tree in the schoolyard. Another tells

Wendell Willkie at Home

about the time when Wendell painted his class numerals on the school walks and was suspended until lie scrubbed them off. It took him a day and ahalf of scrubbing to get back into good graces.

Calvin Sizelove, one of his classmates and now Elwood city treasurer, says: "Wendell wasn't worth a darn until his second year in high school. He was quick, all right; just a glance at a book and he knew the answer. But he didn't settle down to work until Professor Pat Bing got under his skin with a personal lecture on intellectual laziness; then Wendell really went to town."- _ Wendell particularly liked debating, and Mrs. A. H. Vestal, of near by Anderson, who was a delegate to the recent Philadelphia convention, insists that he is "America's" champion debater." She recalls that he debated, as a boy, not only in school, but anywhere he could find an opponent. There was an Elwood restaurant where the youngsters gathered for snacks, and Wendell often led an informal forum there. "He was always one to seek information," says Mrs. Vestal. "He loved to debate, just to get the other fellow's point of view." But he wasn't always the winner in the school debates. At least once he and a team-mate were defeated by two girls, Katherine Henze, now an Elwood accountant, and Eunice Carter. The subject was "Immigration,"

but no one remembers which side Wendell took, and lost. Wendell was graduated in 1910, in a class of only eight. Five of those eight still live at Elwood. Wendell went off to Bloomington that autumn and entered the University of Indiana, from which he received his law degree in 1916. He was admitted to the Indiana bar the same year, returned to Elwood and practised for three years, then went to Akron, Ohio.