Birch Bayh: Making a Difference

By Robert Blaemire

A biography of the US senator from Indiana who was behind such monumental legislation as the 25th Amendment and Title IX.

A remarkable history of one of the most legendary US senators of our time, Birch Bayh: Making a Difference reveals a life and career dedicated to the important issues facing Indiana and the nation, including civil rights and equal rights for women. Born in Terre Haute, Indiana, right before the Great Depression, Birch Bayh served more than 25 years in the Indiana General Assembly (1954–1962) and the United States Senate (1963–1981). His influence was seen in landmark legislation over his tenure, including Title IX, the 25th Amendment, the 26th Amendment, Civil Rights of the Institutionalized, Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention Act, and the Bayh-Dole Act. Bayh was also the author, chief Senate sponsor, and floor leader of the Equal Rights Amendment and successfully led the opposition to two Nixon nominees to the Supreme Court. Robert Blaemire profiles not only the prolific career of this remarkable senator but also an era when compromise and bipartisanship were common in Congress.

“Bayh has long needed a comprehensive biography, and Robert Blaemire has provided an insider’s account of Bayh’s life and career and places him among Indiana’s leading political figures.” —Ray E. Boomhower, author of Robert F. Kennedy and the 1968 Indiana Primary

“The story of Birch Bay’s political career is completely inspiring, especially in an era that has lost touch with bipartisanship and civility. A must read for Hoosiers and for anyone interested in how democracy worked, when it really worked.” —Ted Widmer, historian and former presidential speechwriter

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Apr 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9780253039194

Book preview

"As the father of Title IX, Birch Bayh has left a lasting impact on our country. In Birch Bayh: Making a Difference, it is clear his influence and his contributions will continue to affect all Americans for generations to come in many ways."

—Billie Jean King, founder of the Billie Jean King Leadership Initiative

Robert Blaemire’s celebration of Birch Bayh’s career evokes a different and better time in American politics, when leaders really did think about making a difference. There are many vivid portraits of Bayh’s work on landmark civil rights bills and other legislation. My favorite passage cites Bayh’s question for his staff when facing a tough choice: ‘Just tell me what you feel is the right thing to do.’ Read this memoir and remember a time when people like Bayh, and the decent, compassionate politics of the heartland, were truly the American way.

—David Ignatius, columnist, The Washington Post

"Robert Blaemire’s Birch Bayh is a marvelous biography of Bayh, a dynamo in Indiana politics and the national scene throughout the 20th century. My takeaway, after reading, was that Bayh, a consummate public servant, would have made an excellent president. Highly recommended!"

—Douglas Brinkley, author of Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America

My friend Birch Bayh has led a life of remarkable public service dedicated, always, to making a difference. His supporters and opponents will long remember his skill as a campaigner combined with his ability to reach across the political aisle and achieve constitutional amendments and timely legislation that strengthened our nation.

—Richard Lugar, former United States Senator from Indiana

Birch Bayh was one of the most consequential lawmakers of the 20th century, responsible for constitutional amendments and a long list of legislative accomplishments that changed and improved America. Robert Blaemire has given us a biography that does justice to a great American, a vivid portrait of the man and the Senate at a time when Bayh could work with allies and adversaries alike.

—Norman Ornstein, Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute

The story of Birch Bayh’s political career is completely inspiring, especially in an era that has lost touch with bipartisanship and civility. A must read for Hoosiers and for anyone interested in how democracy worked, when it really worked.

—Ted Widmer, historian and former presidential speechwriter

In Indiana’s, and the nation’s, political history, perhaps no elected official has produced the legislative achievements crafted by US Senator Birch Bayh. In addition to authoring two constitutional amendments—the Twenty-Fifth and Twenty-Sixth—Bayh produced the landmark Title IX legislation, providing women with equal opportunities in public education. Bayh has long needed a comprehensive biography, and Robert Blaemire has provided an insider’s account of Bayh’s life and career and places him among Indiana’s leading political figures.

—Ray E. Boomhower, author of Robert F. Kennedy and the 1968 Indiana Primary

"Highlights the life of one of our most remarkable United State Senators, not just in Indiana but in the nation. Birch Bayh shows the dedication of a man to his state and country through more than 25 years of elected office."

—Geoffrey Paddock, author of Indiana Political Heroes

Birch Bayh

MAKING A DIFFERENCE

ROBERT BLAEMIRE

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

This book is a publication of

Indiana University Press

Office of Scholarly Publishing

Herman B Wells Library 350

1320 East 10th Street

Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA

iupress.indiana.edu

© 2019 by Robert Blaemire

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-0-253-03917-0 (hardback)

ISBN 978-0-253-03918-7 (ebook)

12345242322212019

To

NICK AND DAN,

WHO ARE MAKING A DIFFERENCE IN

THEIR OWN WORLDS,

AND OF WHOM I AM SO PROUD.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1Farmer, Soldier, Legislator

2US Senator

3Assassination and Amendment: 1963

4Crash and Constitution: 1964

5Civil Rights, Guns, and Vietnam: 1965–68

61968

7Haynsworth: 1969–70

8Carswell: 1970

9Campaign and Cancer: 1971

10Title IX: 1972

11Watergate: 1973

12Bayh versus Lugar: 1974

13National Interests: 1975

14Bayh for President: 1976

15The Carter Administration: 1977

16Foreign Intelligence: 1978

17The Death of Marvella: 1979–80

18The Last Campaign: 1980

19Capstone

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgments

BIRCH BAYH PASSED AWAY ON MARCH 14, 2019, AT THE AGE OF 91. Up until the time of his death, he had been living in Easton, Maryland, with his wife, Kitty. Age had slowed him down physically but not mentally, and all evidence seemed to indicate that he enjoyed his retirement on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Kitty took great care of him, and he often talked about the huge and important role she played in his life.

This biography was a labor of love. My long relationship with Birch Bayh and the admiration I have for his career fueled my enthusiasm for this project. This book wouldn’t have been possible without the enormous support and cooperation of Birch and Kitty Bayh. I conducted twelve video interviews with Birch over a period of over four years; the material and photographs Birch and Kitty provided to me were invaluable.

But that is only part of the story: The assistance of former staff colleagues helped me fill in many of the details, both of politics and the legislative process. This work would have been incomplete without the contributions from these people.

Video interviews were conducted with former staffers Gordon Alexander, Jay Berman, David Bochnowski, Bob Boxell and his wife Peggy, Tom Connaughton, Terry Crone, Jim Freidman, Mary Grabianowski, Bob Hinshaw, Bob Keefe, Pat Long, P.A. Mack, Louis Mahern, Ann Moreau, Bill Moreau, Fred Nation, Allan Rachles, David Rubenstein, Diane Meyer Simon, Joe Smith, Jeff Smulyan, Darry Sragow, and Trish Whitcomb.

Video interviews were also conducted with former Congressman Lee Hamilton, former senator Richard Lugar, and Senators Patrick Leahy and Orrin Hatch. The video interview and conversations with former senator Evan Bayh were important additions to this work.

Additional nonvideo interviews and conversations, both verbal and written, that helped advance my research were with former staffers Nels Ackerson, Chris Aldridge, Gail Alexander, Joe Allen, Lew Borman, Tom Buis, Mary Jane Checchi, Ann Church, Patty Dewey, John Dibble, Barbara Dixon, Jim English, Mathea Falco, Kevin Faley, Ed Grimmer, Mary Jolly, Ron Klain, Gary Kornell, Ann Latscha, Barbara Leeth, Tim Leeth, Eve Lubalin, Susan McCarthy, Lynne Mann, Tim Minor, Jay Myerson, Carol Ann Nix, Nancy Papas, John Rector, Joe Rees, John Reuther, Steve Richardson, Abby Saffold, Jerry Udell, and Mark Wagner. Conversations with former mayor Richard Gordon Hatcher were also very valuable. I am also indebted to Herb Simon for our conversation about his relationship with Birch as well as his other efforts to help make this book possible.

I am indebted to my brother-in-law, Lincoln Caplan, for his sage advice about writing a book and getting it published. He connected me to David Korzenik, who provided me with valuable legal advice. My gratitude to both.

A particular debt of gratitude is owed to those who read the text and provided valuable additions, corrections and editing improvements. First on that list is Joanna Caplan, but also Jay Berman, Terry Crone, Kate Cruikshank, Pat Long, Lynne Mann, Diane Meyer, Bill Moreau, Nancy Papas, and Joe Rees. This book is considerably improved because of their contributions.

Thanks is also due to Chris Bayh for his careful reading of the text and the suggestions that he made.

To Bill Moreau, my friend and consigliere, only you know the full story of your contributions that made this possible.

To those I have worked with at Indiana University Press, professionals all, my gratitude goes out to Ashley Runyon and Gary Dunham.

Finally, like so many acknowledgements in books published year in and year out, I need to thank my family. They have been told Birch Bayh stories for the entire time they have known me and despite that, their support and encouragement were total.

To all these people I say thank you. If you had told me as an 18-year-old entering college that I would spend the next thirteen years working for Senator Birch Bayh, I would have been incredulous. I certainly never thought I would become his biographer. But words cannot adequately describe the affection I feel for him or the impact our relationship has had on my life. He entrusted me with a great many things in his career while I was very young, and my gratitude can never be fully expressed. It is my hope that telling his story will begin to pay that debt.

Birch Bayh

Introduction

UNITED STATES SENATOR BIRCH BAYH, A DEMOCRAT FROM Indiana, served in the Senate for eighteen years during a tumultuous time in American history. A campaign slogan of his was One Man Can Make a Difference, and it reflected his belief and his motivation to seek higher office. His story is out of Horatio Alger: a man from America’s heartland without wealth, elected Speaker of the House in the Indiana legislature at age thirty and US senator at thirty-four, author of two constitutional amendments and of landmark legislation with effects lasting through the ages.

His story is not only one of substantial personal accomplishment, however. It is also a story about an era when things worked in American government, an era when Democrats worked with Republicans, when giants walked the halls of Congress and when the public interest was served in ways that are still felt today. It was an era of change, with social movements seeking civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, and environmental protections. It was an era of assassinations, scandal, and a presidential resignation. America’s attention was focused on the United States Senate, and Birch Bayh was very much in the midst of that attention.

Three highlights of Birch Bayh’s history illustrate his impact.

* * *

The twentieth century was nearing its fourth quarter as the United States faced the largest political scandal in its history. The Watergate revelations had been headline news from the time of the break-in at the Democratic National Committee’s Watergate office in June 1972 until President Richard Nixon resigned from the presidency two years and two months later.

Before the Nixon resignation, Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned his office in disgrace.

What became clear as the Watergate scandal unfolded and Nixon’s involvement became evident was that if the vice presidency remained vacant, Speaker of the House Carl Albert would be next in line. Instead of handing the office to a traditional successor, Nixon would be turning over the entire administration to the Democratic Party. For the first time in American history, the Constitution provided a process to fill the vacancy. The Twenty-Fifth Amendment, ratified in 1967, provided a smooth process, and Michigan congressman Gerald Ford became vice president.

Under intense pressure with his congressional support dwindling, President Nixon resigned. Without the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, the smooth transition from Nixon to Ford might not have taken place after the Nixon resignation. The amendment would be invoked a second time when Ford became president, and the vacancy in the office of vice president would be filled once again, this time by former New York governor Nelson Rockefeller. The Twenty-Fifth Amendment, ratified only seven years before, was invoked twice in 1974, changing American history in the process.

* * *

In June 2012, President Barack Obama’s White House hosted a fortieth anniversary celebration of a groundbreaking legislative measure called Title IX, a celebration to highlight the dramatic impact the measure has had on American life. Passed into law in 1972, Title IX was an amendment added during the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act of 1965, taking language out of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment: No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.

Title IX has had a tremendous impact on American life, changing women’s level of participation in all walks of life because of the educational opportunities created for women by its passage. Most attention has been on the role it played in creating women’s sports, but that was more of a side effect than a central intention. The culture of the country has been changed by Title IX. One example of that change is a quotation from that White House ceremony in June 2012. Laurel Ritchie, president of the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA), spoke of taking her young niece to many WNBA games but said that when she took her to see her first NBA game, her niece said to her, Auntie, I didn’t know boys played basketball.

* * *

In 1980, most new innovations and inventions emerging from universities and small businesses were not being brought to market because of government patent policy. The policy said, in effect, that if taxpayers are helping to pay for these innovations, the right to bring them to the public belongs to the public. But the result was that they were not being brought to the public at all. Because Congress finally acted to meet this crisis, things look much different in the decades since. University inventions have spurred on the creation of thousands of new American companies; university patent licensing has brought more than 4,350 new products onto the market. There are now thousands of university–industry licensing partnerships in effect; most of those partnerships are with small companies, leading to the commercialization from this federally funded research of more than 200 new drugs, vaccines, or in vitro devices.

It has been estimated that between 1996 and 2013, university patent licensing contributed $1.18 trillion to the US economy and supported nearly four million good-paying jobs. No other system in the world even approximates these economic and public health benefits derived for American citizens from publicly supported research made possible by this act of Congress, the Bayh–Dole Act. One company that grew out of a federal–university partnership that could not have happened prior to Bayh–Dole is Google.

One person, Birch Bayh, wrote all three of these measures: the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, Title IX, and the Bayh–Dole Act. He also guided to passage the Twenty-Sixth Amendment to the Constitution that lowered the voting age to eighteen, was the Senate sponsor of the unsuccessful Equal Rights Amendment, led the successful Senate opposition to two Nixon Supreme Court nominations, and was a leader in Senate passage of legislation dealing with juvenile delinquency, gun control, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and the original funding of the Washington, DC subway system. He developed a mastery of inside and outside power: the ability to accomplish goals within an institution while motivating influencers outside to help make those accomplishments happen. He is the only person since the Founding Fathers to have steered two constitutional amendments to passage. It can be argued that his greatest contribution was in preventing certain proposed constitutional amendments from becoming the law of the land.

His life demonstrates that a person of ability and ambition can reach the heights of a chosen career and make a difference. This is his story.

1

Farmer, Soldier, Legislator

Democracy is the one form of society which guarantees to every new generation of men the right to imagine and to attempt to bring to pass a better world.

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT¹

THE FUTURE STATE OF INDIANA WAS POPULATED BY NATIVE Americans as early as 8000 BCE. It was explored and then claimed by the French in the 1670s and transferred to British control after the French and Indian War.

Established from a portion of the Northwest Territory, Indiana grew in population until it became the nineteenth state in 1816. Many settlers moved there for the trapping, to farm, or simply to seek a better life. The first governor of the Indiana Territory was William Henry Harrison, who served from 1800 to 1813. As a general in the Indian wars, inexorably forcing the Native Americans off the land they had possessed for centuries, he made his reputation in Indiana and began a political career that would result in his election as president in 1840. Many of Indiana’s ninety-two counties would be named for his officers in those Indian wars.²

As America expanded westward, the National Road was built across the territories, ultimately reaching Indianapolis in 1829. President Lincoln’s Homestead Act encouraged further migration into states and territories like Indiana with the promise of free land to those hardy enough to get there and homestead the land. Indiana’s population grew as rivers and waterways generated commercial activity and steel mills were built in the northwest, beckoning skilled and unskilled laborers. As the railroad was built, it would play a large role in populating the young state.³

The lure of railroad jobs provided the incentive for Christopher Bayh (pronounced Bye) to leave Germany at age twenty and migrate to Indiana in 1858, part of a wave of German immigration that brought to America almost 900,000 in the previous eight years.⁴ He arrived in the United States with only a paper bag containing some belongings and wearing a pair of overalls with a note pinned to them: Send this man out to work on the railroad. He came from a long line of Bayhs in Germany and, like many of that era, saw America as the land of opportunity and hope. The railroad would be his vehicle to realize his dreams. Eventually, he found himself in southern Indiana, near the town of Spencer in Owen County, slightly north of where Abraham Lincoln resided as a boy.

Christopher Bayh (1836–1915) made a life for himself in Indiana, marrying Christina Crauf, another German immigrant, in 1867. Christopher lived seventy-nine years. His wife, Christina (1840–1895), preceded him in death at the age of fifty-five. They were the parents of two sons, John (1867–1966) and Frederick (1871–1947).

Fred grew up in nearby Spencer, where he and his brother owned Bayh Brothers Wagon and Buggy Shop, eventually also owning a hardware store. He walked to and from his hardware store reliably at the same time every day, which his neighbors said allowed them to set their watches by Fred Bayh. Fred married Nettie Evans (1872–1934), and they had three children: Ruth, Bernard, and Birch. The image of Fred and Nettie Bayh sitting in a swing on the porch of their brick house is indelible. Fred’s grandson remembered a nice wagon his grandfather made for him. Nettie was the daughter of Jesse and Elizabeth Evans, and her death would be the first one her grandson ever remembered.

Ruth, later Ruth Bayh Bourne, kept the house her parents owned and lived in it throughout her life. Her father, Fred, died in that house as well. Bernard was remembered as a fine left-handed pitcher and would be the father of two sons, Fred and Bill. Birch Evans Bayh, born in Quincy, Indiana, on September 29, 1893, would have a distinguished career as a teacher, a coach of high school and college basketball and baseball, a high school basketball referee, and a military officer. Once asked about the genesis of his first name, he said that his mother had been reading a romantic novel before his birth. The hero of the novel was named Birch, and she was so enamored of him that she took the name for her son.

John Hollingsworth (1865–1953) and Mary Katherine Ward (1865–1951) came from families that migrated from Great Britain and settled in the Shenandoah Valley before moving west and settling in southern Indiana. They married and had one child, Leah Ward Hollingsworth, born in 1897 at Union Hospital in Terre Haute. Leah grew up to be a teacher at Fayette Township High School in Terre Haute, where she would meet a young coach at Indiana State Normal School, later known as Indiana State Teachers College and now as Indiana State University. The young coach was Birch Evans Bayh. They would marry and have two children: Birch Evans Jr. (born in 1928) and Mary Alice (born in 1930). Birch and Mary Alice were about eighteen months apart in age and would graduate from the same Fayette Township High School where their mother had taught.

Born on January 22, 1928, Birch Evans Bayh Jr. arrived at an interesting time in American history. America was prospering in the decade after the end of World War I. Calvin Coolidge was president. The year before Birch’s birth, Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic Ocean and Babe Ruth hit sixty home runs.

In 1928, the world stage saw Leon Trotsky arrested in Moscow and exiled and saw Stalin launch his first five-year plan. The Kellogg–Briand Pact was signed in Paris, outlawing aggressive war forever. At home, there was the first regular schedule of television programming in Schenectady, New York, and Walt Disney released a cartoon in which Mickey Mouse first appeared. The Democratic Party nominated the first Catholic for president, Governor Al Smith of New York, who was defeated by Herbert Hoover. The convention was simulcast on radio and television.⁵

Birch Evans Bayh Sr., father of Birch and Mary Alice Bayh, served as an example for his children. His passion was physical education and fitness. He served as an NCAA head basketball coach and was basketball and baseball coach at Indiana State from 1918 to 1923, also serving as its athletic director and a professor of physical education. He made quite a reputation for himself in Terre Haute as a coach and statewide as a basketball referee. During his political career, his son would travel around Indiana, regularly running into people with flattering stories about his father, including memories of watching him referee basketball games.

As basketball coach at Indiana State, Birch Sr. led the Sycamores to their first fifteen-win season in 1920–21 and two years later to a 20-and-5 season. His .640 winning percentage ranks him sixth in school history. He became director of physical education for the Terre Haute Public Schools and later held the same job in Washington, DC. He also received an exercise certificate (associate degree) from the North American Gymnastics Union of Indianapolis and coauthored one of the first physical education manuals for American schools. He still holds the record for refereeing ten Indiana high school basketball championship games. His was a hard act to follow but one that brought pride to his children.

Birch Evans Bayh Jr., hereinafter referred to simply as Birch, would be called Bud within the family. His earliest memory was when he was only four or five years old, when the train arrived near the fairgrounds to unload the circus that would soon appear. He remembered the sound of the calliope and recalled watching the men putting up the circus tent and unloading the animals. His mother, Leah, was one hundred percent mother and housewife, a good cook who made her own clothes. His father had courted her in his Model A Ford, and after they married, they made their home in what Birch would describe as a little bungalow at 242 Barton Avenue in Terre Haute.⁶

Terre Haute when Birch arrived was not much of a metropolis. It has been described as the northern center of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, full of demented kooks—including many of the city’s most prominent citizens—prancing around in their sheets and pillowcases.⁷

When Birch was in the third grade, the Washington, DC public school system hired his father to head its department of physical education. The young family moved to the Lux Manor area in Rockville, Maryland, to a house at 7 Sedgwick Lane near Old Georgetown Road, five or six miles from DC. The house cost just $17,000. Birch attended Bethesda Elementary School and Alta Vista Elementary School. The latter school was experimenting with classes that included students from two grades at the same time, which may help to explain why he would graduate from high school at age seventeen. Starting in 1939, he attended Leland Jr. High for grades seven through nine. With a January birthdate, his parents could choose whether to hold him back or start him early. They did the latter, and he was always among the youngest in his classes.

When Birch was twelve years old, Leah was hospitalized with uterine cancer, now detectable with a Pap smear. She was at Columbia Hospital for Women in Washington, DC, where her husband would spend lots of time. Every day after school, Birch called the hospital to talk with his mother or to ask his father’s permission to do whatever he had plans for that afternoon or evening. He remembered being in bed with his father during this period, listening to him describe his mother’s condition and asking him, Dad, do you mean Mom might die? His father replied, We hope that won’t be the case.

One afternoon he called the hospital and the operator said, There’s no Mrs. Bayh here. He replied, I talked to her this morning. She put him on hold while she checked and on returning told him, Mrs. Bayh died. I’m sorry. The phone went dead.

Mary Alice remembered Birch screaming, which he had blanked from his memory.

In 1940 the family moved back to Indiana, to the 360-acre Hollingsworth farm just south of Shirkieville, near Terre Haute. Birch had completed the first year of high school at Bethesda-Chevy Chase in Bethesda, Maryland, and transferred to Fayette Township High School in Vigo County, where his mother had taught. Birch felt his grandparents had saved his life; being raised by a single father in the DC area never would have brought him the benefits of living on a farm with his grandparents. He remembered them as pioneer types, Granddad John Hollingsworth having crossed the Shenandoah Mountains in a covered wagon. Mary Katherine Kate Hollingsworth was remembered as five feet tall with knee-length hair that she usually kept wrapped in a bun behind her head. He remembered that they showed no emotion, but he did recall sitting at the top of the stairs with his sister, listening to his grandparents talking with his father and bringing him to task for taking their girl to Washington, partially blaming him for her death. Birch remembered no other women ever being present in his father’s life.

Birch Bayh Sr. had been a captain in World War I; he was a major by the age of twenty-one, and he reentered the military in May 1941. He joined the army and toured the United States, visiting bases where he taught physical fitness to young pilots. Within a month after Pearl Harbor, he received his commission and shipped off to Kunming, China, to work with the Flying Tigers. Flying Tigers was the nickname for the First American Volunteer Group of the Chinese air force, recruited under presidential authority to assist in the defense of China against the Japanese. His ranking meant he would always be addressed as Colonel Bayh. Birch and Mary Alice continued to live in Shirkieville with their grandparents.

Birch always regretted being too young to fight in World War II. When they lived in Rockville, their father would sometimes drive them to Rehoboth, Delaware, right after the war in Europe began. He recalled seeing oil washed up on the beaches because of the damage the German navy was doing to Allied shipping. Later Birch seriously considered enlisting for the Korean War, but the five-year commitment was daunting when the popular expectation was that the war would only last a matter of months.

Birch grew close to his grandparents. His affection for the farm was great, and he grew to love agriculture. He was given calves to tend and learned to grow tomatoes. He found that hard work could be joyous. His chores included lighting his grandmother’s coal stove, feeding the chickens, putting down hay for the cattle and corn for the hogs, collecting eggs, milking cows, waxing the linoleum kitchen floor, combining the wheat, putting up bales of hay in the barn, making and mending fences, churning milk for butter, plowing fields, planting crops (corn, soybean, wheat, hay), and tending to a vegetable garden. Eventually he would proudly show his 4-H club calf at the Vigo County fair.

Mary Alice had no interest in household chores and spent her time reading movie magazines, something Kate Hollingsworth could not appreciate. Birch greatly loved his grandfather and became his principal farm assistant. He never saw him take a drop of liquor and assumed he never did, until he found a fifth of whiskey in the woodshed, something he never told a soul. After supper, his grandfather always smoked a pipe or a five-cent La Fendrich cigar. He was a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat who would move close to his great big cabinet radio to listen to Franklin Roosevelt’s fireside chats.

In the summer of 1944, Birch won the Campbell Soup Tomato Growing Contest, a statewide competition that awarded for the largest tomato with the highest quality. He was elected president of his 4-H club and also placed third in the NJVGA (National Junior Vegetable Growers Association) Demonstration Contest, winning its regional scholarship in 1945. While busy with his agricultural activities, he found himself to be a comfortable and successful public speaker. And in 1945 he went on to win the county and district Rural Youth Speech Contests.

Around this time, Campbell Soup officials visited the Hollingsworth farm to discuss the possibility of growing tomatoes there for the soup company. Birch could hear the discussion one night from the top of the stairs and grew excited about the prospect of the farm growing a crop he felt he knew so well, plus the prospect of a relationship with such a successful franchise.

But John Hollingsworth demurred, saying that he had done well with the crops he had and saw no need to add tomatoes to the mix. Birch was deflated when he heard this and the polite exit by the representatives of Campbell Soup, but then he heard his grandmother admonish her husband. She had seen the expression on her grandson’s face.

John, she said, if the boy wants tomatoes, he gets tomatoes.

Yes, Kate, was the reply. They began growing tomatoes on the farm. Birch later said that it was the GI Bill and tomatoes (the latter earning $1,600), which helped him go to Purdue and paid all his bills.

Birch was given a six-acre plot of land and a team of mismatched horses in order to cultivate his tomatoes, yielding one hundred tons by the end of the year. At harvest time, while still in school, he rose at dawn twice a week, drove to Terre Haute, and picked up twelve to fifteen migrant workers. After school, he worked with them in the field. In the evening, they loaded seven tons of tomatoes into three-foot hampers on a flatbed truck for the twelve-mile drive to Campbell’s processing plant. His record for one day’s work was loading seventy-two hampers. The work ethic became a part of his life, something he rarely thought about. Farming responsibilities meant a job with no days off. He was physically fit and outdoors daily.

While in high school, Birch had his first romantic relationship, with a girl named Billie Marie Hatcher. Billie’s uncle Oren was the Fayette Township trustee. Her father owned a car that he allowed Birch to drive: his first experience with an automatic transmission. Billie’s mother demonstrated her interest in fostering the Bayh–Hatcher relationship. In the waning days of their romance, Billie’s mother sent Birch a note telling him that Billie had eyes for another young man and if Birch was serious about her, he had to do something. He never did.

In May 1945, Birch graduated from Fayette Township High School in a class of twenty-six students. He was both vice president and salutatorian of his senior class. As a member of 4-H, he had been the president of Vigo County Rural Youth. A year later he would be president of Indiana Rural Youth, an organization sponsored by the Farm Bureau. He wanted to enlist in the war, which would end that August, but he was too young. During that summer, his father’s good friend Jake Maehling, principal of Woodrow Wilson Junior High School in Terre Haute, offered to take Birch to his alma mater, Purdue University, and show him around. They made the trip to West Lafayette and stayed in the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity house. During that visit, Birch made up his mind that he was going to become a Purdue Boilermaker and that he would rush the ATO fraternity. Jake Maehling became one of the most important people in Birch’s life, almost a surrogate father. As Birch once mused, He must have seen something in me he liked. He always suspected that his father had written to Jake, asking him to look out for his son.

Birch recalled his first car, a red Mercury convertible with a white top. He told his grandparents that he wanted a motorcycle, leading his grandfather to take him shopping for an automobile instead. When his grandfather asked him which one he wanted, Birch pointed out the Mercury convertible, feeling that its $800 price tag was too expensive. If that’s what you want, was the response, and it became his.

Not long after he was given the car, he took a curve too fast and went off the road. The car flipped over, and Birch had to crawl out of the upside-down car through its trunk, escaping with only a bloody nose. He couldn’t believe what he had done to his very first car. It wouldn’t be the last time he escaped serious injury in an accident.

Cars weren’t his only form of transportation. Birch and a friend pooled their resources to buy an Aeronca single-engine airplane that cost them very little. They paid an instructor $50 to teach them the basics, and they used it to fly back and forth between Purdue and Shirkieville. As convenient as it seemed and as much as Birch loved the flying experience, the potential dangers were obvious. His friend once landed the plane in a strange field and almost turned it over. Once when Birch landed it, he realized he was flying with less than a gallon of gas left in the tank. Soon the plane was sold, and the boys made $125 apiece.

Mary Alice started acting in high school plays and pursued a degree in theater at Indiana State. Knowing their father would not approve, she and Birch led him to think she was getting a degree in education, and he never learned the truth. Coincidentally, Mary Alice and Birch graduated college on the same day. Birch’s graduation came late because he enlisted in the army between his freshman and sophomore years at Purdue, an eighteen-month enlistment. After graduation, Mary Alice followed her passion and moved to New York City, where she appeared in a number of off-Broadway plays, mostly in character roles. She later moved to Baltimore, where she also acted in plays.

While in the army, Birch trained at Fort Lee, Virginia, and went on to spend a year in Germany with the 529 Military Police Company, serving from October 4, 1946, until February 12, 1948. While he was proud to win his battalion’s marksmanship award, what made him even prouder was becoming captain of the baseball team. His marksmanship later served him well: as a supporter of gun control, he shot guns in front of suspicious journalists, surprising them with his expertise. But his first glimpse of fame was related to his agricultural background and the circumstances of postwar Germany.

One of his superior officers, Corporal George Rademacher, had a German girlfriend and became particularly interested in helping those in the area who were struggling. Birch suggested that they learn how to grow their own food in their own gardens and sent a letter to the Vigo County agricultural agent, Mildred Schlosser: Please send at once $4 worth of vegetable garden seeds. Be sure to put in some sweet corn. I enclose check. The letter was signed Birch Bayh, Private First Class. She mailed seeds to Birch at the army barracks. A superior officer saw the seed packets in Birch’s footlocker and admonished him, and he ended up carrying them around in his pockets until he and Rademacher could meet with the Germans who were interested in growing their own food. In the town of Hungen, they created thirty-six plots of vegetables that helped many residents avoid starvation during those difficult times.

Birch was particularly worried about the children in the area, and he enlisted their help. He helped ninety children from forty-five families design and plant vegetable gardens. When the harvest came, each family received 30 pounds of cabbage, seven pounds of beans, a peck of spinach, eight pounds of turnips, six of rutabagas, a peck and a half of tomatoes. The children took home parsley, cucumbers, peppers, beets, lettuce, kale, chard and herbs.⁸

Mildred Schlosser, a friend of the Bayh family, was friendly with author Karl Detzer, who wrote an article about farming being done in Germany with the assistance of a private from Indiana. The article, entitled GI Ambassador, appeared in the November 1948 Reader’s Digest. It described Birch as Miss Schlosser’s star pupil in agricultural extension work. Birch had been a 4-H president for two terms and his tomato patch had won the A&P Tea Company’s $200 prize as the best teen-ager’s garden in the state.⁹

One of Birch’s army buddies was Ralph from Oregon. Most soldiers had photos of women in their lockers, usually a girlfriend from home; Birch’s locker contained a picture of his girlfriend, Billie Marie. Ralph, on the other hand, had posted pictures of Mount Hood in Oregon. He was even less a man of the world than Birch was. On one of their furloughs, Birch, Ralph, and a few other army friends made an excursion to Paris, the most exotic of European cities and a visit he would never forget.

Birch also had a German girlfriend. At first Lila Limbach, a telephone operator, was just a pleasant voice on the phone and one who spoke perfect English. During their courtship, Birch discovered that she was an epileptic, having witnessed one of her fits. He remained committed to her until she started telling him he needed to spend less time playing baseball and more time with her. He didn’t take well to that attitude, calling it unpardonable.

While in Germany, Birch jogged on a large track near an athletic facility. Inside the facility was a boxing ring where weekly fights were held. He decided to try boxing, something he had done at Purdue. Every Sunday the Red Cross chartered a boat and on it American GIs competed with Polish soldiers. Birch won his first fight against a Polish boxer. Once he mastered how to deflect a right cross while reacting with a strong blow to the opponent’s midsection, his next fight lasted only one minute and thirteen seconds. He started winning, and he yearned for more.

After finishing his commitment to the army, Birch resumed his studies at Purdue. While browsing the campus bookstore, he saw a poster that said Read about Purdue’s own GI Ambassador but did not realize it was about him. His fraternity brothers held a celebration because of the article, something he would never forget. Later, they elected Birch fraternity president, a position he held for his final two years at Purdue, which he considered one of the great honors in his life. He was also elected president of the senior class and chosen as Purdue’s Outstanding Agricultural Student, having been awarded Ralston Purina’s Danforth Fellowship, given to one student at each land grant college in the country. For his senior class presidential campaign, he organized the campus into precincts and assigned his fraternity brothers to talk to students in their designated precincts. Birch spoke to every student in the senior class and sent postcards to all of them. He even launched Vote for Bayh balloons around the campus. Birch spoke through a loudspeaker while riding in a bright red farm wagon hitched to a car driven around the Purdue campus, which proved to be excellent training for the future.

He took up boxing again, eventually becoming Purdue’s champion in the light heavyweight division. On a boxing trip to Gary, Indiana, he loaned a teammate his mouthpiece to help keep the teeth where they belong. His teammate got knocked out, and Bayh was called up to fight a boxer described as the next Joe Louis. Entering the ring with a fever he had been nursing all weekend and still without his mouthpiece, Birch was quickly punched in the mouth and thrown out of the ring. He came back with a fury and knocked his opponent down seven times but lacked the energy to put him away. Nonetheless, he won the fight against an opponent who was hardly the next Joe Louis.

The next day, during a fight with a boxer from Notre Dame University, Birch knocked his opponent down right away. The fighter got back on his feet and was soon back on the mat. This time the referee stopped the fight, making up for what he had failed to do the night before. That day Birch was introduced to one of the most famous boxers to come out of Indiana, Tony Zale of Gary. During the introduction, Zale just said, Hi, bud, never taking his attention away from the bout taking place. Whenever Birch later thought of fighters getting punch drunk, he remembered Tony Zale, who may have fought one fight too many.

Though Birch won a Golden Glove as a light heavyweight boxer, boxing wasn’t the only sport in which he excelled. He was passionate about baseball, his first love in sports. He played third base or shortstop and was quite a hitter. He was once told that he looked like his father out there at third base, where Birch Sr. had also played, the only difference being his father’s chaw of tobacco; he had never known that his father even chewed tobacco. He fondly remembered playing shortstop for Purdue against Notre Dame and recalled gazing up at the famous golden dome. A fellow Purdue teammate was Bill Skowron. Known as Moose, Skowron went on to become a New York Yankee and play fourteen major league seasons. Hoping to play baseball professionally, Birch attended a tryout for the Brooklyn Dodgers but had difficulty hitting a major league curve ball.

During his college days at Purdue, Birch made what would be two lifelong friendships, one with P. A. Mack, who would be the best man at his wedding and later join the Senate staff, and the other with Wayne Townsend, whose Indiana political career paralleled Birch’s in a number of ways. Townsend remembered a college event when Birch wanted desperately to date a woman who was already pinned to another student. Nonetheless, she agreed to go out with him. He planned a romantic canoe ride on a nearby lake. They ended up capsizing and walking back to her sorority house sopping wet, where they encountered her pin-mate waiting for her. To avoid a violent confrontation, Birch successfully used the persuasive powers he would later find to be so useful in politics.¹⁰

After graduating with a degree in agricultural economics, Birch took part in a Rural Youth Speech Contest at the Congress Hotel in Chicago. The subject of his oration was public service. He called it We Grow by Serving Others, a topic that would resonate throughout his life. It was there on December 3, 1951, that he met Marvella Hern of Enid, Oklahoma. Marvella was representing the state of Oklahoma. Daughter of a wheat farmer and named after a Norwegian aunt, Lillian Morvilla, Marvella was a freshman at Oklahoma A&M, now known as Oklahoma State University, and had been the governor of Girls State and president of Girls’ Nation. Birch noticed her in a cafeteria with a group of other contestants. He joined the group and, noting she was from Oklahoma, introduced himself saying, Sit over here, Oklahoma, and get to meet some folks from Indiana. Many times after this meeting and in light of the fact that Marvella won the contest, Birch would say, She won the contest, and I won the girl.

Both Marvella and Birch were farm kids and smart, ambitious, and intensely interested in public affairs. He prided himself in his public speaking ability and was strongly attracted to this pretty young woman who could best him.

They started dating right away and, because of the considerable distance between their homes, burned up the long-distance phone lines, especially on Sunday evenings. The phones were generally unreliable, especially after a rainstorm. They were known as party lines, as they were shared by four or five families. Birch knew fairly quickly that Marvella was the girl for him, and soon he hoped to marry her. Marvella must have felt the same way. After returning home from Chicago, both Birch and Marvella told their families they had met the person they would marry. Birch later learned that Marvella’s mother, Bernett, chewed out her husband, saying, Delbert, I sent you to Chicago to look after our little girl, and you go and let her fall in love with an older man.

In the summer of 1952, Marvella attended summer school at Indiana State, eventually transferring there. On one of their drives from Terre Haute to St. Louis so she could take the train back to Enid, Birch and Marvella decided that they wanted to be married. Marvella, born on February 14, 1933, was just nineteen, and Birch was twenty-four. They were married on August 24, 1952, and immediately moved to the Hollingsworth family farm to be with Grandfather Hollingsworth. Grandmother Kate had died the year before. Once married, Birch decided to stop pursuing his dream of being a professional baseball player. He was earning a good living on the farm, and with his grandfather’s advancing age, he was increasingly in charge.

Just before the Bayh–Hern wedding, the couple fell victim to a shivaree, a prank popular at that time in rural Indiana. It involved separating the couple and transporting them to strange locations. A Purdue friend, Don Foltz, came to the farm to take Birch away, and Birch cooperated. After all, he had participated in this custom at the expense of others over the years. They blindfolded Birch, took off all his clothes, handcuffed his wrists behind his back, drove him around for quite a while, and carried the future bridegroom to a shed. He had no idea where he was.

Left alone in the shed, he wriggled around until he got his hands in front of him. Pulling off the blindfold, he saw that he was in a shed filled with feed grain. He struggled upward on the mound of grain until reaching the roof, which he pushed upward with his head. Looking outside, he got his bearings and could see the highway in the distance. Being naked, there was no way he could head to the highway, but soon he realized that Billie Marie’s uncle Oren lived about two miles from where he was. He struggled out through an open window and dropped to the ground. Later, recalling the event, he said, I could have castrated myself on a damn nail.

He walked the two miles, naked, handcuffed and barefoot. Arriving at Uncle Oren’s house, he pounded on the door, calling out, Uncle Oren, it’s me, Birch.

The response came back: Wait a minute, let me turn on the light.

No, don’t do that, said Birch. Uncle Oren came out and assessed the situation. Shivaree was known to Uncle Oren, so he took Birch to the barn and chiseled off the handcuffs. Given clothes to wear, Birch took off to find his betrothed. The female counterparts of Foltz and company had taken Marvella to a distant location, but eventually Birch found her, and they returned to the farm.

The next day, Don Foltz showed up at the shed, looking for Birch. Alarmed to find him missing, he went to the Hollingsworth farm and found Birch working in the field. So, you got away, he commented and told Birch he needed the cuffs back, which had been borrowed from his policeman uncle. Birch gave him the pieces of the handcuffs, and the alarmed Foltz said, We need to get them replaced. Birch said, What do you mean, ‘we’? Don Foltz, a fellow Purdue grad from neighboring Vermillion County, would win election to the Indiana General Assembly on the same day as Birch.

Although Birch was close to his grandparents, he had the good fortune to have another surrogate mother, a woman he had always known as Auntie Katherine. Katherine Henley had been a sorority sister of Birch’s mother and her closest friend. When he moved back to Terre Haute after his mother’s death, he established a close, filial relationship with Katherine. Married to Henry Henley, a prominent Terre Haute florist, she was always someone Birch could turn to for advice. It was Auntie Katherine in whom Birch first confided that he had fallen in love with Marvella, and it was with Auntie Katherine that Marvella stayed when she paid her first visit to Terre Haute.

John Hollingsworth, Birch’s grandfather, loved Marvella Bayh. He loved watching her come down the stairs in the morning and loved the breakfasts she made for him. In December 1952 he fell ill and went into the hospital, where he died the following month.

America in the 1950s was a different place than in the previous decade, which had seen both war and depression. Domestically, industry was booming, and the generation of former soldiers and their families was building the suburbs and assuming leadership in the country. Internationally, the Cold War was dominant, with the fear of communism constant. Even with the end of the Korean War, the nation remained almost on a war footing, always vigilant to the threat of communism. The fifties were rife with McCarthyism and the Red Scare; the Soviet Union developed the atomic bomb, Red China was on the rise, and eventually the Cuban revolution took place, with its leader Fidel Castro announcing that he too was a communist. It was the decade of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who ascended to the presidency following the unpopular Truman presidency. The US economy prospered; even Europe was recovering, in part because of the Marshall Plan. By the end of the decade, America had become a country of fifty states, with the