Robert
Samuel Kerr was
born near Ada, Indian Territory, September 11, 1896.
He studied at East Central Normal School and Oklahoma Baptist University.
He was admitted to the Oklahoma Bar in 1922, and practiced in Ada.
In
1926 he became a drilling contractor in 1926 and over the years built
up a large oil producing company called Kerr-McGee Oil Industries.
A member of the Democratic Party,
he served as Governor of Oklahoma from January 13, 1943, to January
13, 1947.
Kerr
was elected U.S. Senator on November 2, 1948. During his tenure as
US Senator, he worked to get the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation
System developed. Kerr served on several key committees including
the Finance and Public Works committees. He also forged alliances
to key senators, such as Lyndon
B. Johnson.
Kerr increasingly became known as a key champion of southwestern oil
and gas interests. Millions of dollars were diverted to military and
civilian projects in the state.
According to the journalist, Milton Viorst: "Kerr
was a self-made millionaire who freely and publicly expressed the
conviction that any man in the Senate who didn't use his position
to make money was a sucker. In a body where few of the members are
averse to earning a fast buck, Kerr was the chief of the wheelers-and-dealers."
Kerr became a member of
what became known as the Suite 8F Group.
The name comes from the room in the Lamar Hotel in Houston where they
held their meetings. Members of the group included Lyndon
B. Johnson,
George Brown and Herman
Brown (Brown & Root), Jesse H. Jones
(multi-millionaire investor in a large number of organizations and
chairman of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation), Gus
Wortham (American General Insurance Company), James
Slither Abercrombie (Cameron Iron Works), William
Hobby (Governor of Texas), Richard Russell
(chairman of the Committee of Manufactures, Committee on Armed Forces
and Committee of Appropriations), Albert
Thomas (chairman of the House Appropriations Committee) and John
Connally (Governor of Texas). Alvin Wirtz
and Edward Clark, were also members of
the Suite 8F Group.
Robert
Samuel Kerr
died on 1st January, 1963.
Open
Debate on the Kennedy Assassination
(1)
Milton
Viorst, Hustlers and Heroes (1971)
While
Bobby was playing politics with Lyndon and arranging parties with
Gorgeous George, he was learning about a whole new facet of life from
Senator Robert Kerr of Oklahoma. Kerr was a self-made millionaire
who freely and publicly expressed the conviction that any man in the
Senate who didn't use his position to make money was a sucker. In
a body where few of the members are averse to earning a fast buck,
Kerr was the chief of the wheelers-and-dealers. For some reason, he
took a shine to Bobby and found him an apt and receptive pupil. He
helped Bobby get started as a businessman, both with advice and with
cash. Bobby learned to play the stock market, then spread out into
other ventures. His biggest undertaking in the late Fifties was the
Carousel Motel, which he built on a, patch of desolate beach near
Ocean City, Maryland, a few hours from Washington. Its opening in
1962, which Lyndon and Lady Bird and dozens of other Washington celebrities
attended, was a major social event, covered in detail by the status-conscious
women's pages of the local papers. It is doubtful that anyone suspected
that in the fun at the Carousel lay the seeds of Bobby's downfall.
For Bobby, after all, was among the most respected young men in official
Washington. He was the protege of Johnson, Smathers and Kerr. Without
a single voter behind him, he had shown he could keep up with the
fastest pacers on Capitol Hill. As the Presidential election of 1960
approached, Bobby's potential for growth appeared unlimited.
(2)
Russell Kirk,
Political Errors at the End of the Twentieth Century (1991)
During the
Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, probably the richest man in
the Senate was the most corrupt of senators: Kerr of Oklahoma, whose
devious enriching ways are candidly described by his lieutenant,
Bobby Baker, in the latter scoundrel's memoirs. To perceive how
deep in peculation was President Johnson himself, assisted by his
agents Bobby Baker and Billy Sol Estes, one may turn to the recent
memoirs of a Republican of integrity, Senator Carl Curtis, entitled
Forty Years Against the Tide.
(3)
Bobby
Baker, Wheeling
and Dealing: Confessions of a Capitol Hill Operator (1978)
There was big money
to be made, Kerr said, by gaining a near monopoly on soft drink, candy,
and cigarette machines to be installed at sites where companies were
performing defense-related work that depended on government contracts.
I've heard that Clark Clifford, the Washington lawyer-lobbyist who's
been close to every Democratic administration beginning with Harry
Truman's, talked Senator Kerr out of investing in the scheme because
it clearly would constitute a conflict of interest on Kerr's part.
Senator Kerr then told Fred Black, "I want to help Bobby Baker.
I'll get you the financing if you guys want to go into the vending
machine business. There's a fortune to be made." True to his
word, Senator Kerr obtained a $400,000 loan for us from the Fidelity
National Bank and Trust Company of Oklahoma City, in which he owned
stock. We spent the money for vending machines, installing them -
among other places - at North American Aviation and at several subsidiary
sites. Within a couple of years the Serv-U Corporation we founded-along
with my law partner, Ernest Tucker; a Las Vegas hotel-casino man,
Eddie Levinson; and a Miami investor and gambler, Benjamin B. Siegelbaum
- was grossing $3 million annually. I owned 28.5 percent of the Ser-U
Corporation in those days.
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