The Pittsburgh Press (October 4, 1944)
‘Man in Brown Derby’ rose high to fame
New York (UP) –
Alfred E. Smith, “the Happy Warrior” who cut a leading figure in national Democratic politics from 1920 until 1932, was four times Governor of New York State, and ran for President in 1928, died at 6:20 a.m. ET today.
A solemn requiem mass will be celebrated for Mr. Smith at 11:00 a.m. Saturday at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, with burial in the family plot at Calvary Cemetery, Queens. The funeral will be simple. There will be no honorary pallbearers, and no flowers.
The “Man in the Brown Derby,” who rose to power and fame from the poverty of a New York City slum, took his last breath with a prayer on his lips, fully conscious it was his last, just as the Rev. John Healy, his Parish priest, entered his room at the Rockefeller Institute Hospital.
His physician, Dr. Raymond P. Sullivan, came down to the hospital lobby where reporters were waiting and, wet-eyed, announced his death.
“This is the last of a great man,” he said. “He was a real man, a great father, a great American.”
Dr. Sullivan said Mr. Smith had had “a severe relapse” at 5:30 a.m., “accompanied by acute heart failure.”
Hospital authorities sent at once for Father Healy and Mr. Smith’s children. Father Healy arrived just as Mr. Smith died and the children – Mrs. John Warner, Mrs. Francis J. Quillinan, Walter Smith and Arthur Smith – came a few minutes later.
Mr. Smith’s sister, Mrs. Mary Glynn, and his old friend, John J. Raskob, the motor magnate who helped him finance the world’s tallest structure – the Empire State Building – was with them. A third son, Alfred E. Smith Jr., is on duty with the Army in the South Pacific.
Seventy years old, Mr. Smith had been ill most of the summer, following the death of his wife, Catherine, on May 4. He was transferred from St. Vincent’s Hospital to the Rockefeller Institute Hospital three weeks ago and had been at the point of death since Saturday.
Among the scores of floral tributes arriving at the hospital last night were a dozen American Beauty roses and the card from President and Mrs. Roosevelt.
Dr. Sullivan said “the immediate cause of death was the lung congestion which developed Monday night and acute heart failure.” The cause of Mr. Smith’s long illness, he continued, was “intestinal and liver disturbances.”
Those who had known Mr. Smith intimately over the years said that he never recovered from the shock of his wife’s death. Mrs. Catherine Dunn Smith, the woman who bore him five children and watched his political career build up from a Tammany leader to the Governors chair at Albany and reach its eminence as his party’s presidential candidate, died May 4, 1944, of pneumonia after a five-week illness.
Born in 1873
Al Smith was born Dec. 30, 1873, in an Irish community on New York’s Oliver Street. His birthplace was only a short distance from the 14th Street Tammany wigwam, home of the political creed that there always would be coal-in-the-cellar for a vote-on-the-line.
In parochial school, Mr. Smith found a stage for his inherent love of dramatics. If there was a fat comedy party in a school play, the sister in charge of dramatics knew unerringly whom to cast in it. Young Al played the tragedian with equal success. He still had acting on his mind when at 14 he quit school to help out at home after his father’s death.
He made a brief try at running his father’s teamster business, then found a job in the Fulton Fish market before deciding that politics was his field.
Wed Oliver Street ‘belle’
At 21, he went on the public payroll as clerk in the office of the New York Commissioner of Jurors. Shortly afterward, he met and began courting Catherine Dunn, the belle of Oliver Street and daughter of a moderately prosperous ship’s chandler.
Mr. Smith was warning $75 a month when he married Miss Dunn. They moved into a small flat and began their life together that continued until her death.
Mr. Smith traveled political upward fast as far as he could go.
His ability and wide acquaintance brought him the Democratic leadership of the New York State Assembly in 1911. He reached the Governor’s mansion in Albany in 1918. His defeat for reelection as Governor in 1922 set the stage for his doomed presidential aspirations.
As a member of the Legislature and as Governor, Mr. Smith introduced dozens of broad social, economic and political reforms.
The Manhattan State Hospital fire in 1923, which destroyed an old wooden building and killed 25 patients, promoted Mr. Smith to propose a $50-million bond issue to improve state hospitals.
Safety laws rewritten
The famous Triangle shirtwaist factory fire in New York was Mr. Smith’s opportunity to write sweeping safety laws into the statutes. He liberalized workmen’s compensation laws, amended the domestic relations law to provide for the support and education of illegitimate children and signed a bill providing $2,500,000 in bonuses to the next of kin of World War I dead.
Mr. Smith in 1923 fought for amendments to civil service rules and regulations so that women could compete for certain civil service jobs. He promoted the construction of Sing Sing Prison, new state office buildings, a state health laboratory and many schools, hospitals and parks.
Families divided
In 1928, the presidential nomination fell into Mr. Smith’s lap, and the nation promptly settled down to one of the most partisan campaigns in years – Hoover vs. Smith.
Families were divided on the issue, and religious feeling hit a fever pitch. Al Smith was a devout Catholic. Mr. Smith’s bandwagon was noisy, but weak in the axles. He carried only eight states.
Mr. Smith reorganized the Democratic National Committee and was making strides in the 1932 campaign when he realized that Mr. Roosevelt was traveling a separate road.
The 1932 Democratic Convention in Chicago made everything clear. Mr. Smith arrived with a scattering of support and instantly assured leadership of the “Stop Roosevelt” movement. Mr. Smith’s cloture forced a nightlong session of the convention which remained deadlocked until the following day when William G. McAdoo steered California’s votes to Mr. Roosevelt.
Mr. Smith left the convention, and his departure presaged his action in 1936 when he joined a coalition of wealthy Democrats in the American Liberty League to stop Mr. Roosevelt.
He ignored the Democratic National Convention that year, and supporter Alfred M. Landon, the Republican nominee. That “walk” was in reality Mr. Smith’s first strides into the long corridor of political obscurity. He was through.
Roosevelt: Al Smith ‘a true patriot’
Washington (UP) –
**President Roosevelt said today that in the passing of Al Smith, the “Happy Warrior” whom he twice nominated for the Presidency, “the country loses a true patriot.”
“Al Smith had qualities of heart and mind and soul which… made him the idol of the multitude,” Mr. Roosevelt said in a statement issued at the White House shortly after he had been informed of Mr. Smith’s death in New York early today.
The statement said:
The nation mourns the death of the Happy Warrior. Al Smith had qualities of heart and mind and soul which not only endeared him to those who came under the spell of his dynamic presence in personal association but also made him the idol of the multitude.
To the populace he was a hero. Frank, friendly and warmhearted, honest as the noonday sun, he had the courage of his convictions, even when his espousal of unpopular causes invited the enmity of powerful adversaries.
During his tenure as Governor of the great State of New York, he attracted national attention by his skill as an administrator. It was a natural sequence that he should become the candidate of his party for the highest office in the land. In a bitter campaign, in which his opponent won, Al Smith made no compromise with honor, honesty, or integrity. In his passing, the country loses a true patriot.