National Affairs: End of Willis

A good deal of legend died last week with Frank Bartlette Willis. The red flares, whose fumes he inhaled fatally during his last triumphal political parade, belonged no more wholly to an old Ohio era than did he.

It was as a truly favorite son that he and his motorcade, preceded by militia and Boy Scouts, blared down the main street of Delaware, his home town. The entire populace had turned out, regardless of party. Other towns in Ohio, “Mother of Presidents,” had taught little Delaware how to act now that one of its own was recognizable as a candidate for the candidacy. Handsome, big-voiced Frank Willis was the man who placed President Harding in nomination.

When he reached the platform in Gray Chapel, on the Campus of Ohio Wesleyan University, all Delaware was massed in the seats. Marching clubs were milling about. The “President-making” Republican Glee Club of Columbus sang the late Mrs. Harding’s favorite song, “The End of a Perfect Day.” Senator Willis, feeling though not recognizing the start of a cerebral hemorrhage, muttered to his wife that he needed air. He walked across the platform, staggered through the door, fell into the arms of his secretary, Charles A. Jones.

A moment later, Mr. Jones whispered: “He’s gone away from us.” A political epoch had gone, too.

When Frank Bartlette Willis was a young school teacher, college student and professor of history and economics at Ohio Northern University (Ada, Ohio), the great political names in Ohio were McKinley, Hanna, Foraker, Hay. President Garfield’s sons were still on the scene. John Sherman, Secretary of the Treasury, Senator, Secretary of State, did not die until 1900. Ohio politics was a vivid mixture of business (two parts), religion (two parts) and state pride (one part). The twin veins of politics and religion in Mark Hanna appeared as twin veins of business and religion in Ohio’s great industrialists of that day, such as John D. Rockefeller of Cleveland and the Gambles and Procters of Cincinnati. A purer vein of religious sentiment was springing forth in a southern county as the Anti-Saloon League. The industrial vein was becoming purer, too, as Ohio grew and diversified with rolling mills at Youngstown, rubber at Akron, motor cars (Packard) at Warren, ore and paint at Cleveland, liquor at Cincinnati. More numerous and politically potent than all were Ohio’s farmers. State pride in “home grown” products was the bond used by the politicians to tie the whole State together.

Frank Bartlette Willis, farmer’s son, was “home grown” even more consciously and thoroughly than his outstanding contemporaries, Warren G. Harding and James M. Cox. He did not live to outgrow Ohio, like a William Howard Taft or a Theodore Elijah Burton. He would have resented the suggestion that he could ever outgrow Ohio. He died as he could only have wished to die, of red fire and political excitement, just after shaking the hand and naming the name of every member of the Delaware Kiwanis Club. Governor and Senator he had been. Anti-Saloon League champion and lion of small-town Ohioans, he remained. President he was not destined to be but he died at the peak of his endeavor in that direction. Ohio wept him. The Senate mourned him. The country noticed that he was gone.

Senator James Thomas (“Tom Tom”) Heflin of Alabama, who mortally hates and fears the Roman Pope, telegraphed to Mrs. Willis: “Pardon me for suggesting that you have a competent chemist in whom you have confidence to examine the contents of his [Senator Willis’] stomach.” The telegram was intercepted by Secretary Jones. No chemist was engaged. Senator Heflin explained he suspected skullduggery by bootleggers.

¶ In Washington, close friends of Senator Willis were shocked, astounded, stunned by his death. His health had seemed that of a huge, robust boy. Senator Johnson of California, beside whom the dead man used to sit in the Senate, cried: “Damn the politics! That’s what killed him.”

Said Candidate Hoover, against whom Candidate Willis had been exerting himself in Ohio: “Mr. Willis as school teacher, Governor and Senator has given his life to honest, upright public service. The passing of so conscientious a public servant is a matter of deep regret to every citizen.”

¶ The impending Ohio primary was temporarily confused. With their candidate dead, district delegates meant for Willis supposed that they would be instructed for “second choice” candidates—Lowden, Curtis, Watson. But the votes had yet to be cast. The outcome of Hoover-v.-Willis was inscrutable.

¶ Governor Donahey of Ohio being a Democrat, Senator Willis’s death offset the death last fortnight of Senator Ferris, Democrat from G. O. P.-governed Michigan, so far as Senate votes went.