NEWS
ITEMS
Craighead County,
Arkansas Genealogy Trails
DEATH OF CARAWAY
LADY FROM ARKANSAS
DEATH OF
CARAWAY
TIME Magazine, November 16, 1931
Long had Senator Thaddeus *Horatius
Caraway of Arkansas been bothered with a stone in the
kidney. Fortnight ago he entered St. Vincent's Infirmary
at Little Rock to have it cut out. Last week he was
convalescing comfortably after the operation when an old
friend, with a jug of cider, called on him at the
hospital.
"Come in! Come in!" cried the Senator. ''The
doctor says what I need is someone to cuss the cussedness
out of me and you're just the man to do it. So cut loose.
I'm to get up next week, doctor or no doctor. The friend
came in. They talked and laughed. A half hour later
Senator Caraway lay dead in his bed. A sudden blood clot
in the coronary artery had killed him.
Thus did the Senate lose its foremost sarcastigator, the
Democrat whose tongue was like the lash of an Arkansas
snake whip. The Caraway manner belied the Caraway mind.
He used to slouch indolently in his Senate seat or pace
the centre gangway and back aisles, hands dug deep in
pockets, shoulders humped, bald head bent. Suddenly he
would straighten up to cut in on a debate. Never a maker
of long formal speeches he drawled out words that stung
his adversaries, bitter words that left scars. Not soon
will Truman Newberry or Albert Bacon Fall or Harry
Micajah Daugherty or William Scott Vare or Frank Leslie
Smith, Republicans all, forget the things that the
narrow-eyed junior Senator from Arkansas said to them and
about them. Less nimble-witted Republicans used to call
him a common scold.
Last year Senator Caraway slashed and cut at President
Hoover until he won a thumping big relief fund for
Arkansas drought sufferers. That came close to being his
only constructive piece of legislation during his ten
years in the Senate.
Caraway was born in Missouri 60 years ago. His father, a
Confederate veteran, was murdered in a back-country feud.
Young Thad did farm work at 7, sweated as a railroad
section hand, sold patent medicines, taught school. Later
he studied law. In 1912 he was elected to the House of
Representatives where he served three quiet,
inconspicuous terms. Not until he came to the Senate did
his quality as a political gadfly on the broad complacent
back of the G. O. P. elephant become apparent. A
friendly, amiable man out of politics, he shunned
Washington Society, put two sons through West Point.
Unlike Senator Morrow, who lived 38 hours beyond an
important deadline (TIME, Oct. 12), Senator Caraway died
two days too soon to help his party. By law the Governor
of Arkansas may not now appoint his successor but must
order a special election between 60 and 120 days after
his death. The empty Caraway seat insures Republican
control of the Senate when it sits.
*Zealously did Senator Caraway conceal his
middle-name. Once he discharged a secretary for divulging
it.
LADY FROM
ARKANSAS
TIME Magazine, Nov. 23, 1931
Inheritance of office, common in the
House, was unknown in the Senate until last week. To fill
the vacancy left by the death of Senator Thaddeus
Horatius Caraway of Arkansas, Governor Harvey Parnell
announced simply: "I have appointed Mrs. Caraway . .
. because I feel she is entitled to the office held by
her distinguished husband, who was my friend. . . . Mrs.
Caraway is a most estimable woman, thoroughly capable and
her service in the Senate will be an honor to the
State."
This might have been taken as pure chivalry, like the
gesture that put 87-year-old Rebecca Latimer Felton,
"Grand Old Lady of Georgia" into a Senate seat
for 24 hours in November 1922. But Governor Parnell went
further. Decreeing a special election Jan. 12 to fill
Senator Caraway's place permanently, he recommended Widow
Caraway for the Democratic nomination, promised to vote
for her.
If Widow Caraway behaves as her husband did in the
Senate, she will seldom sit down in her seat. Instead she
will clasp her hands behind her back and pace, shoulders
hunched, up & down the aisles, back & forth in
front of the lounges along the Chamber's rear wall. She
will purse her lips, frown as though deep in thought,
halt now & then to fix some speaking Senator with a
sharp, doubtful glance. From time to time she will
address the Chair to interject some comment,
acid-humorous in intent for her husband was the Senate's
conscientious sarcastigator. Then she will resume her
soft pacing through the aisles, around the back,
shoulders hunched, pondering profoundly, a little
bitterly. . . .
Being a sensible woman, however, estimable-capable Widow
Caraway will doubtless sit quietly where she belongs and
listen politely when she enters the Chamber at all. For
who better than she should know the alarm with which
women are viewed by the members of the Greatest Club in
the World? She better than most people could feel last
week the polite frigidity which permeated the Senate's
stag atmosphere at news of her appointment. Her presence
will restrain the free-&-easy language of the
Democratic cloakroom. It may necessitate the construction
of a private lavatory. Some Senators may feel shy about
spitting their tobacco juice in a lady's presence. The
Greatest Club will be changed. . . .
Last week the new Lady from Arkansas sat quietly in her
small Jonesboro home, surrounded by her three sons and
flowers left over from the funeral. Short, maternal, with
brown wavy hair and blue eyes, she has, after 29 years of
married life, grown to resemble her husband, especially
about the small tucked-in mouth, the narrow eyes. She and
Thaddeus Caraway met at Dixon College, Tenn. They both
taught school in rural Arkansas. For a honeymoon they
went to New Orleans. While her Washington friends were
last week proclaiming her witty and wise, she with tears
in her eyes was disclaiming all political pretensions.
Said she: "I'm 53. The Senator said a woman who will
tell her age will tell anything. ... I will try and
follow the program of the Senator. . . . Everyone has
been so lovely. . . . This is only the second time I've
ever been interviewed and I've never made a political
speech in my life. When the Senator came home at night,
we didn't talk politics. He came home to rest. He wasn't
one of those husbands who called their wives when they
made a speech and told them to get their friends to come
and listen in the gallery. I had one warning that he was
going to speak. That was when he made his Drought speech
[Feb. 2, 1931] and then I didn't go and all my friends
were angry with me. . . . "Oh, yes, I made a hole in
par once."
|