NPC in History – We Want Willkie redux

The great thing about writing these history pieces for the Wire is that from time to time someone will contact me with additional information that makes the role of the National Press Club in history even more significant.

One of those times was last week. The piece I wrote was about Wendell Willkie’s speech at the Club just days before he was nominated as the 1940 Republican standard bearer against Franklin Roosevelt.

Willkie was a Democrat who had only officially turned Republican in 1939. He was a Wall Street businessman who had never run for office and had not entered any GOP primaries. Yet he was beginning to draw huge support because he gave inspirational speeches and opposed the isolationist sentiments of the lead Republican candidates just was Hitler was sweeping across western Europe.

The Wire article said Willkie’s speech was off the record.

It landed in the hands of David Willkie, Wendell’s grandson, and David Lewis, author of the recent biography, “The Improbable Wendell Willkie.” They said the speech was off the record – except for one significant thing that had reporters in the room running for the door. This is how I am amending last week’s story:

Hard as it may seem today, but with less than two weeks to go, Willkie had not formally announced his candidacy. He and Charles Halleck, a delegate to the convention and an old friend of Willkie, had agreed that Halleck would nominate Willkie at the convention. But they were trying to keep the plan under wraps.

At the reception before the luncheon speech, Halleck saw a copy of a story coming out in the Indianapolis News that reported their plans.

In an oral history housed at Indiana University, Halleck recounted what happened next:

“So, as Wendell walked in, I said, ‘Look, Wendell, this story's getting out. Mark Thistlethwaite's written it for the Indianapolis News. If you're ready to go, I am.’ … (Willkie) was making quite a speech up there, off the record, and all at once he said, ‘Gentlemen, this is on the record. I'm going to be a candidate for the president of the United States, and my good friend Charlie Halleck from Indiana's going to place my name in nomination.’ Well, of course, about half of that crowd got up and ran out, because it was big news.”

In the few years after losing the election and before his death of a heart attack in 1944, Willkie stressed the concept of loyal opposition in wartime. In 1942, he became an official envoy of the Roosevelt administration, traveling around the world to report back to the American people about the war, culminating in his best-selling book, “One World.” He was a champion of civil rights and with Eleanor Roosevelt founded Freedom House, which continues to measure economic and political freedoms around the world. He was even chairman of 20th Century Fox, and was the lead speaker at the 1942 Academy Awards.

Politicians from President Gerald Ford to for Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., a Club member who died this week, cited Willkie as their inspiration for entering politics.

And, being able to run a second Willkie story gives me the opportunity to run another photo taken at the luncheon to illustrate just how grueling it was to speak here before air conditioning.

This is another in a series provided by Club historian Gil Klein. Dig down anywhere in the Club’s 111-year history, and you will find some kind of significant event in the history of the world, the nation, Washington, society, journalism and the Club itself. Many of these events were caught in illustrations that tell the stories.