Word: brucker
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Early Life: Son of a Michigan lawyer and politician, Brucker resolved to become an orator when beaten by a girl in a high-school debate, thereafter talked tirelessly (and often tiringly) fof practice. Orphaned as a boy by his father's death, he waited on table at the University of Michigan, became a lawyer himself. In 1916 he marched off to Mexico in Pershing's expedition against Pancho Villa, later fought with General Douglas MacArthur's Rainbow Division in France. He came out with a Silver Star and a first lieutenant's silver bar. After...
Career: Although his father had been a Democratic Congressman (1897-98), Brucker went into Republican politics. At 33 he became state attorney general and in 1931, at 36, governor of Michigan. He cut his own salary 10% (to $4,500 a year). "I feel," said Brucker, who dealt with millions at work and pinched pennies at home, "like a vagabond king." In his 1932 re-election campaign Mrs. Brucker tried to help, made a speech proclaiming: "Wilber has been a great governor. Two years ago, when he took office, the state had a deficit of $2,000,000. Today...
When Charlie Wilson abruptly offered Brucker the Army secretaryship last week, he asked for time "to call the Missus." He phoned home to tell her, "I guess I'm in the Army now." Then he went back to Wilson's office and took on the job of bossing the 1,100,000-man U.S. Army...
Personality & Private Life. A sturdy 5 ft. 10 in., Brucker likes to hike, golf, swim in the pool at home in Grosse Pointe Farms, Mich. In Washington he has not yet picked up a club, lives in a one-bedroom apartment where Mrs. Brucker collects Meissen china and 3-D photos. Their son is a third-generation lawyer in Detroit. Even-keeled Wilber Brucker neither drinks nor smokes, laughs readily and hail-fellows Odd Fellows, Masons, and a host of other fraternal brothers. At a recent Washington party he met a Soviet general, who asked if he had ever seen...
...McCarthy's tactics ("Come on, Robert, tell us the truth now"). With his resignation all the principals have given up the positions they then held except Joe McCarthy himself, still in the Senate but now stripped of power and prestige. Stevens' successor as Army Secretary: Wilber Brucker, the Defense Department's general counsel, who early this year laughed in McCarthy's face...