Gerald Nye

Born in rural Wisconsin, Nye spent fifteen years as a country editor in Wisconsin, Iowa, and North Dakota. A progressive Republican, he was appointed U.S. senator from North Dakota in 1925 to fill a vacancy; he won elections on his own in 1926, 1932, and 1938. During the 1930s, Nye was to the left of the New Deal on domestic policy. In 1934–36, he gained national prominence as chairman of the Special Senate Committee Investigating the Munitions Industry. The committee probed into the close ties between the U.S. and Allied military and the arms manufacturers and financiers, focusing in particular on the Dupont and Morgan interests and their enormous profits in the World War I era, the so‐called merchants of death. He unsuccessfully called for heavy taxation of war profits and governmental power to take over industries.

A strong isolationist, Nye sought to limit U.S. military defense to the western hemisphere, endorsing more airpower but curbing battleship production. Influential in the drafting and adopting of the Neutrality Acts of 1935–37, he vigorously opposed President Franklin D. Roosevelt's interventionist policies of 1939–41, speaking frequently for the America First Committee. So extreme was his rhetoric that in 1941 he called Britain “the greatest aggressor in modern times.” He lost his Senate seat in 1944 in a three‐way race.

[See also Isolationism; World War I: Domestic Course.]

Bibliography

• Wayne S. Cole, Senator Gerald P. Nye and American Foreign Relations, 1962.
• John Edward Wiltz, In Search of Peace: The Senate Munitions Inquiry, 1934–36, 1963

Nye, Gerald Prentice (1892-1971) U.S. senator (1925-45), born in Hortonville, Wisconsin. Nye gained prominence through his chairmanship of a special Senate committee, usually referred to as the Nye Committee, formed to look into allegations that the munitions industry was responsible for provoking international conflict (1934-36). Nye became not only a strong proponent of neutrality legislation, but also, as war began to come closer, an outspoken advocate for nonintervention. A powerful orator who took to the airwaves to disseminate his views, Nye was one of the leading speakers at rallies of the America First Committee. Like most noninterventionists, he supported the war following the attack on Pearl Harbor (1941). Nye was defeated for reelection in 1944.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

Gerald Nye (1892-1971) was a U.S. Senator from North Dakota for 19 years. During his tenure, Nye gained national headlines for his leadership in several Senate investigations, including the Teapot Dome scandal and the inquiry into the business practices of munitions makers during World War I. He was a strong voice for American isolationism and vehemently opposed to U.S. involvement in World War II.

Gerald Prentice Nye was born in Hortonville, Wisconsin, on December 19, 1892, the first of four children born to Irwin Raymond and Phoebe Ella (Prentice) Nye. Nye's mother, always rather frail, died two months before his fourteenth birthday. Two years later, his father remarried, and Nye developed a warm relationship with his stepmother, Annie Semple. It was his father, however, that affected Nye's life most intensely. Soon after Nye's birth, his father, the editor of the weekly newspaper in Hortonville, moved his family to Wittenberg, Wisconsin to become the editor of that town's weekly newspaper, the Enterprise. A devote Republican and a strong supporter of Wisconsin progressive governor Robert M. LaFollette, the senior Nye used his newspaper to support numerous causes and reforms, not the least of which was political corruption. As Wayne S. Cole noted in Senator Gerald P. Nye and American Foreign Relations (1962), "As Gerald grew up he was immersed in the mores and values of the protest and reform movements that enlivened the western political scene during those years. When Gerald later took up the cudgels against big business, Wall Street, and special interests on behalf of the common man and the farmer, he was in a real sense continuing his father's earlier crusades."

Nye attended Wittenberg High School, where he was only an average student, but a leader of many extracurricular activities, including baseball, basketball, football, and the debate team. Graduating with his ten classmates in 1911, Nye planned to attend Marquette University to study dentistry, but financial hardship prevented his enrollment, and he subsequently never attended college. Having learned the newspaper business from his father, Nye became the editor of the Hortonville Weekly Review. Only 18 years old, what he lacked in experience, Nye made up for in enthusiasm and intensity. Campaigning for "clean government" in Hortonville, Nye targeted the local saloons. Although he was fairly successful in creating an anti-saloon movement in the small town of eight hundred, Nye's aggressive and relentless attacks cost him advertising money, printing business, and subscriptions. Compounded by his habit of spending beyond his means, Nye, who had purchased the newspaper in 1912, found himself in debt over $2,500 by September 1914. The following month, with a promise to pay his creditors, Nye closed down the newspaper.

The now-wiser 22-year-old Nye moved to Creston, Iowa, to become editor of the daily newspaper, the Plain Dealer. During the year that he spent in Creston, Nye tackled local, regional, national, and international topics in the eight-page spread. Writing as many as four editorials every day, Nye continued to campaign for temperance and prohibition. He also gave high priorities to the issues surrounding World War I, calling on the country to support President Woodrow Wilson. Considering his own strict isolationist policy before World War II, it was somewhat ironic that in 1915 Nye denounced former Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan for his isolationist views. Nye left the Plain Dealer to become a circulation manager for the Des Moines Register and Leader. However, he did not like the work, and in May 1916 he moved to Fryburg, North Dakota, as the new owner and editor of The Pioneer, which became the first privately owned newspaper in the state to tender its support to the Nonpartisan League, a newly formed progressive agrarian reform movement. In the same year, he married Anna Margaret Munch. They had three children and later divorced in 1940. After three years, Nye moved to Cooperstown, North Dakota, where he purchased and operated the Griggs County Sentinal-Courier. Continuing to support the Nonpartisan League and agrarian reform, Nye campaigned for LaFollette in his 1924 bid for the presidency as the candidate for the Progressive party. In the same year, Nye made his first step toward becoming a politician, losing a bid for a seat in the House of Representatives.

In 1925 Nye was appointed to the U.S. Senate by North Dakota governor, A.G. Sorlie, to fill a vacancy created by the death of Senator Edwin F. Ladd. One week after being named to the Senate, Nye left for Washington, D.C. It was the first time he had ever traveled farther east than Chicago. Although his credentials were presented on December 7, 1925, Nye did not take his seat in the Senate until January 12, 1926. A controversy arose over his appointment as some questioned the governor's authority to make the appointment. The official issue was that the North Dakota legislature had failed to bestow on the governor the power to make federal appointments. Little more than a technicality, the legal question was overshadowed by political considerations. As a progressive Republican, Nye did not garner the support of the conservative Republican senators who feared Nye would vote with Democrats and weaken the Republic hold on the Senate. After returning from a recess over the holidays, the Senate debated for five days before confirming Nye's appointment by a two-vote margin.

After winning a special election in June 1926 and then the primary and general election of 1926, Nye established himself as a duly elected U.S. senator. He would win reelections in 1932 and 1938, serving for a total of 19 years in the Senate. Youthful in appearance, conscious of his small-town background and lack of education, and slightly awed by his position, 33-year-old Nye, the second youngest senator at the time, looked the part. Nonetheless, little time passed before Nye, handsome, with unquestionable integrity, and the ability to speak powerfully and convincingly, earned the respect of his colleagues. During the first eight years in office, he focused on domestic policy, particularly those issues addressing the midwestern and western farming communities. Believing that the farmer was the backbone of the country, Nye was critical of any special favors or privileges allotted to the big businesses of the East. Although he originally vowed to support the Republican caucus, Nye was publicly critical of numerous conservative Republican policies. He supported numerous New Deal measures proposed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, but he vehemently opposed Roosevelt's National Recovery Act, which Nye argued created monopolies and preyed on the masses. He remained a vocal opponent of the National Recovery Act until the Supreme Court eliminated it in 1935. Often aligning himself with progressive Senators Robert M. LaFollette of Wisconsin and George W. Norris of Nebraska, Nye pushed for agricultural reforms and argued for the adoption of the McNary-Haugen bill, which created governmental price supports for basic crops.

Well-respected by progressives in his home state, Nye began building a national reputation in the 1920s as a skilled conductor of Senate investigations. As chairperson of the Committee on Public Lands and Survey, he presided over the investigation of the Continental Trading Company in what became known as the Teapot Dome scandal. The investigation revealed that President Warren G. Harding's interior secretary, Albert B. Fall, had leased an oil field valued at $100 million to Harry F. Sinclair of the Mammoth Oil Company without opening the offer to fair, competitive bidding. In return for the privileged lease, a large contribution was made to the Republican National Committee. As a result of Nye's investigation, the government revised the lease and recouped more than $7 million in tax money. Nye also chaired a committee appointed to investigate Senate campaign expenses in 1930. Once again Nye made headlines by exposing corrupt campaigning.

In 1932 questions began to arise within peace societies over the role of munitions companies in World War I. Based on rumors and reports that munitions makers had provoked war scares, opposed peace initiatives, and controlled corrupted public officials, the public began to call for an investigation. With most unwilling to undertake the project, fearing injury to their political careers, Nye was the only Senator who would agree to take on the influential munitions manufacturers. Having long believed in the dangers of big business and considering munitions companies as merchants of death, he felt morally obligated to investigate.

According to John E. Wiltz in In Search of Peace: The Senate Munitions Inquiry, 1934-36 (1963), when Nye agreed to chair the investigating committee, "At that moment, Nye began a new phase of his career. He would earn a reputation as the country's most eloquent isolationist. He would become a leader in the campaign to preserve peace for the United States at almost any cost - to put America first." Having supported the war effort during World War I, Nye, disillusioned with the ability of war to create viable solutions for peace, became one of the country's leading voices of isolationism, lambasting munitions makers and military personnel for attempting to push the United States into another world war.

On April 12, 1934, the Senate adopted Senate Resolution 206, also known as the Nye-Vandenberg Resolution, which directed the U. S. Vice-President to appoint a seven-member council to investigate individuals, associations, and corporations engaged in the manufacturing, distribution, sale, and import or export of munitions. Public interest was aroused, and numerous articles and editorials kept the public's attention throughout the hearings. From the start, Nye anticipated the guilt of the munitions manufacturers. According to Wiltz (1963), just days before the resolution was passed and before any investigation had been organized, Nye told a national radio audience of his feelings while watching a parade of 5,000 marching by the U. S. Capitol the previous week in celebration of Army Day: "Yet, even in that inspiring moment, I could not fully restrain myself and be blind to the fact that those glistening steel helmets, for example, were the profit-returning products of American manufacturers, a product intended to protect those fine heads under the helmets against shrapnel and shells which the same manufacturers had sold to the military departments of other nations which might some day be our foe in war. What madness. What rotten commercialism. Name a more inhumane trade. Was ever a more insane racket conceived in depraved minds or tolerated by an enlightened people?"

In part due to the public dissatisfaction with big business caused by the Great Depression, many in the country believed Nye's assessment. The committee hearings caused a national stir and resulted in sensational headlines. Although the committee could not prove the munitions makers pushed the United States into World War I, they did uncover unsavory connections between the military, munitions makers, and the huge wartime profits of numerous manufacturers and bankers. Although no legislation offered by the investigating committee was adopted, the findings did raise public awareness and interest in keeping the United States out of another war. Subsequently Nye was actively involved in the passage of the neutrality legislation passed in 1935, 1936, and 1937. These laws, in an attempt to avoid the U.S. involvement in another war, made illegal arms sales or loans to nations at war and permitted sale of nonmilitary goods only if the countries at war paid cash and did not transport the goods on American ships. During these years of national exposure as chair of the munitions investigation, Nye was at the peak of his senatorial career, gaining national acclaim for his public speeches denouncing the arms dealers and the need for American isolationism.

By 1939 war was already breaking out across the sea and the United States itself was torn between the desire to help its allies and the desire to stay out of the conflict. When Roosevelt attempted to repeal the neutrality acts, wishing to extend all aid short of war to U.S. allies, Nye became a leading voice opposing the president. In 1940 Nye was appointed to the Senate Foreign Relations committee and became a spokesperson for the newly formed America First Committee, an independent organization that opposed U.S. involvement in World War II. In March 1940, his first marriage ended in divorce, and in December of the same year, Nye married Marguerite Johnson, a schoolteacher.

On December 7, 1941, Nye was speaking before a large America First crowd at a rally in Pittsburgh when he learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Noninterventionist activities were halted abruptly. Despite his commitment to neutrality, as a patriotic American, Nye called for support of the war effort. After Pearl Harbor, public opinion shifted dramatically and those who opposed U.S. intervention were examined with suspicion. Thus, when Nye, the voice of non-interventionism, ran for reelection in 1944, he lost. After running a consulting business in Washington, D.C. for a time, Nye became the president of Record Engineering. In 1959, he accepted an appointment as the special assistant in charge of housing for the elderly for the Federal Housing Administration. In 1963 he resigned from his job and became a staff member of the Senate Committee on Aging. He retired in 1966 and died in Washington, D.C., on July 18, 1971.

Books

American National Biography, edited by John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, Oxford University Press, 1999.

Cole, Wayne S. Senator Gerald P. Nye and American Foreign Relations. University of Minnesota Press, 1962.

Encyclopedia of American Biography. Second edition. Edited by John A. Garraty and Jerome L. Sternstein, HarperCollins Publishers, 1996.

Lamar, Howard R., The Reader's Encyclopedia of the American West. Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1977.

Noggle, Burl. Teapot Dome: Oil and Politics in the 1920s. Louisiana State University Press, 1962.

Wiltz, John E. In Search of Peace: The Senate Munitions Inquiry, 1934-36. Louisiana State University Press, 1963.

Online

"Gerald Prentice Nye," Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement 9: 1971-1975. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1994. http://www.galenet.com (December 20, 2000).

Gerald Nye
United States Senator from North Dakota
In office November 14, 1925 – January 3, 1945
Preceded by	Edwin F. Ladd
Succeeded by	John Moses
Born	December 19, 1892 Hortonville, Wisconsin
Died	July 17, 1971 Brentwood, Maryland
Political party	Republican

Gerald Prentice Nye (December 19, 1892–July 17, 1971) was a United States politician, representing North Dakota in the U.S. Senate from 1925 to 1945. He was a progressive Republican and anti-war activist.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Newspaper years 3 Political years 3.1 Teapot Dome Scandal 3.2 Nye Committee 3.3 Antiwar Movement 4 Post Senate years in Washington 5 Death 6 Notes

Early life

Nye was born in Hortonville, Wisconsin to Irwin Raymond Nye and Phoebe Ella Nye (née Prentice). Gerald, whose name was pronounced with a hard G, was the first of four children and the only one born in Hortonville, where both his Prentice and Nye grandparents resided. In his first year he and his parents moved to Wittenberg, Wisconsin, where his father became owner and editor of a small newspaper. Three more children were born there: Clair Irwin, Donald Oscar, and Marjorie Ella.

Nye recalled scenes from his youth in Wittenberg. At five in 1898 he watched the men of town doing military exercises in the streets of Wittenberg in preparation for the Spanish-American War. On September 6, 1901, the telegraph operator called him, nine years old at the time, out of the street to hurry and carry a message to his father at the newspaper office, "President McKinley has been shot!"

Nye's father was a staunch supporter of Progressive Robert M. La Follette, and Nye personally remembered his father's taking him to hear Senator La Follette speak and then meet the Senator afterwards. Years later, Gerald and Robert LaFollette the younger would serve in the US Senate together. When Gerald was about twelve, visiting his uncle's family in Minneapolis, Gerald was in a crowd when the cry went up, "Pickpocket!". He was alarmed as anyone and then astonished and frightened when he was hauled off to a police station. The police questioned him for some time and finally asked where he lived. They were astonished themselves to learn that Gerald was staying with his uncle, Wallace G. Nye, Mayor of Minneapolis. They treated him very respectfully after that.

Gerald's mother, Ella, had been diagnosed with TB. Family history indicates that she may have been asthmatic. She made trips to the south for recuperation on October 19, 1906 she died. Gerald wrote about that tragic event in his life. He was thirteen; his brothers, ten and eight; and his baby sister, six. He was comforted by the presence of his four grandparent at the funeral. Both of his grandfathers, he noted, had served in the Civil War. Freeman James Nye in the Union Army's Wisconsin 43rd Volunteer Infantry Regiment and George Washington Prentice in the Wisconsin 3rd Cavalry.

Gerald Prentice Nye, 18, graduated from Wittenberg High School in 1911 and moved back to his grandparents' town of Hortonville, WI. There, he became editor of The Hortonville Review. Three years later, he was the editor of the Creston Daily Plain Dealer in Iowa.

On August 16, 1916, he married Anna Margaret Munch in Iowa. The couple moved to Fryburg, North Dakota where Gerald bought the Weekly Pioneer. In 1919, they moved to Cooperstown where Gerald was the editor and publisher of the Sentinel Courier. Anna and Gerald had three children: Marjorie Eleanor Nye (b. May 6, 1917), Robert Gerald Nye (b. Cooperstown, ND on June 16, 1921), and James Prentice Nye (b. Cooperstown, ND on June 8, 1923, served in US Navy, World War II).

At the Cooperstown Sentinal Courier, Gerald's editorials lambasted big government and big business. He took the side of the struggling farmers. His progressive views were popular. These were hard times in North Dakota.

In 1925 he was called into the office of the ND Governor A.G. Sorlie. Senator Edwin F. Ladd had died and Gerald arrived at the office with others interested in hearing news of the governors appointment. Pencil and pad in hand, he took a seat on a ledge by an open window. When the governor announced that he had decided to appoint "Jerry over here" to fill the seat, Gerald nearly tumbled out the window.

The young family moved to Washington in 1925. Gerald's youth, and lack of sophistication were the talk of the town. He had a bowl haircut that was ridiculed. However, he became a very active, popular and outspoken Senator and North Dakotans elected him to three more terms. He served twenty years in the US Senate, losing his fourth election bid in 1945.

Senator Nye, true to his progressive views, was a supporter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal. He served on the Foreign Relations Committee, the Appropriations Committee, the Defense Committee and the Public Lands Committee. As Chairman of Public Lands, he dealt with the Teapot Dome investigations and the formation of Grand Teton National Park. He was instrumental in passing legislation to protect public access to the sea coasts.

The Special Committee on Investigation of the Munitions Industry investigated profiteering in the munitions and banking industry and the possibility that greed was a significant factor in leading us into World War I. The Nye Committee as it was commonly known, drew national and international attention. Nye's appointment to the chairmanship of this committee came from Senator George Norris. According to peace activist, Dorothy Detzer, Norris said, "Nye's young, he has inexhaustible energy and he has courage. Those are all important assets. He may be rash in his judgments at at times, but it's the rashness of enthusiasm." ^[1] Senator Norris proposed Nye as "... the only one out of the 96 whom he deemed to have the the competence, independence and stature for the task." ^[2]

Defeated in his re-election attempt in 1945, Nye chose to remain in the Washington area. He and Marguerite had purchased 3 acres (12,000 m²) of pasture land in Chevy Chase, part of a farm on a hill above Rock Creek Park. They designed and built a brick, farmstyle home and Gerald, who loved gardening and nature, planted trees and dug gardens on the open acres.

He organized and became president of Records Engineering, Inc., engaging in the creation and management of records by industry and government. In 1960 he was appointed an assistant to the Commissioner of FHA in charge of housing for the elderly. Leaving that in 1963, he accepted an appointment on the professional staff of the US Senate Committee on Aging. 1966 saw a grand retirement party at the US Capitol. Attended by the Senators Kennedy and hosted by a witty, Senator Dirksen who presented Senator Nye with a typewriter and desk lamp and orders to begin his memoirs. Never retiring, he became a consultant to churches and private groups desiring government funds for the building of retirement housing.

It was there that the children grew up and attended high school. Anna and Gerald divorced in March 1940. Every summer, Gerald took the children to Yellowstone where Marjorie and a young Gerald Ford were teenage friends.

Appearing so young and unsophisticated when first he went to Washington, he was elected by North Dakotans to three more terms in the Senate, totaling twenty years of service ending in 1945.

On December 14, 1940, Gerald married Iowa schoolteacher A. Marguerite Johnson, whom he'd met years before when he and his sons, driving in Yellowstone National Park, stopped to help a group of teachers, stranded with a flat tire. Marguerite and Gerald had three children, all born in Washington, D.C.: Gerald Prentice Nye, Jr. b. 1943 and Richard Johnson Nye, 1944, both Vietnam War veterans; and Marguerite Deborah Nye, born 1950(m. John AF Corgan, Washington, DC, 1981).

Nye served as first editor and later owner of several newspapers, purchasing the Fryburg Pioneer in Billings County in May 1916. He was an editorial supporter of the agrarian reform movement.

Newspaper years

Gerald and his brother Clair had grown up helping around their father's newspaper business and learned the trade. Gerald took the editing end and Clair operated the presses.

In May 1916, Gerald bought a weekly paper in Fryburg, ND, The Fryburg Pioneer. On August 16, 1916, he married Anna Margaret Johnson (b. Utah) in Iowa where she lived with her maternal grandparents and had taken their name, Munch. Gerald and Anna lived in Fryburg, ND where Gerald had, in May of that year, purchased a weekly paper The Fryburg Pioneer Billings County

In 1919, they moved to Cooperstown where Gerald was the editor and publisher of the Sentinel Courier. Anna and Gerald had three children: Marjorie Eleanor Nye (b. May 6, 1917), Robert Gerald Nye (b. Cooperstown, ND on June 16, 1921), and James Prentice Nye (b.Cooperstown, ND on June 8, 1923, served in US Navy, World War II). Gerald was a supporter of the agrarian reform movement. His editorials lambasted big government and big business. He took the side of the struggling farmers. His progressive views were popular. These were hard times in North Dakota.

Political years

Nye had unsuccessfully sought election as a progressive Republican to the U.S. House in 1924. When Senator Edwin F. Ladd died on June 22, 1925, Gerald Nye, newspaper editor, and others gathered in the office of ND Governor A.G. Sorlie, all interested in hearing news of the governors appointment. Pencil and pad in hand, he took a seat on a ledge by an open window. When the governor announced that he had decided to appoint "Jerry over here" to fill the seat, Gerald nearly tumbled out the window. He'd been appointed to fill the vacancy and was then elected to fill the Senate seat in 1926. Nye supported the political positions of Robert M. La Follette. Nye supported legislation for agricultural price supports.

The young family moved to Washington in 1925. Gerald's youth, and lack of sophistication were the talk of the town. He had a bowl haircut that was ridiculed. However, he became a very active, popular and outspoken Senator and North Dakotans elected him to three more terms. He served twenty years in the US Senate, losing his fourth election bid in 1945. His eldest three children grew up on Grosvenor Street and attended high school in Washington, DC. Every summer, Gerald would take the children to Yellowstone where Marjorie and a young Gerald Ford were teenage friends. Anna and Gerald would divorce in March 1940.

Senator Nye, true to his progressive views, was a supporter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal. He served on the Foreign Relations Committee, the Appropriations Committee, the Defense Committee and the Public Lands Committee. As Chairman of Public Lands, he dealt with the Teapot Dome investigations and the formation of Grand Teton National Park. He was instrumental in passing legislation to protect public access to the sea coasts.

The Special Committee on Investigation of the Munitions Industry investigated profiteering in the munitions and banking industry and the possibility that greed was a significant factor in leading us into World War I. The Nye Committee as it was commonly known, drew national and international attention. Nye's appointment to the chairmanship of this committee came from Senator George Norris. According to peace activist, Dorothy Detzer, Norris said, "Nye's young, he has inexhaustible energy and he has courage. Those are all important assets. He may be rash in his judgments at at times, but it's the rashness of enthusiasm." ^[1] Senator Norris proposed Nye as "...the only one out of the 96 whom he deemed to have the the competence, independence and stature for the task." ^[3]

Teapot Dome Scandal

Nye uncovered that Warren G. Harding's interior secretary Albert B. Fall had uncompetitively leased a government oil field to Mammoth Oil Company, in return for contributions to the Republican National Committee. This is now know as the Teapot Dome Scandal and gave Nye the reputation as "Gerald the Giant-Killer."

Nye Committee

In 1934 Senator Nye headed an investigation of the munitions industry. He created headlines by drawing connections between the wartime profits of the banking and munitions industries to America's involvement in World War I. Many Americans felt betrayed: perhaps the war hadn't been an epic battle between the forces of good (democracy) and evil (autocracy). This investigation of these "merchants of death" helped to bolster sentiments for isolationism.1 A leading member of the Nye Committee staff was Alger Hiss.

Antiwar Movement

Nye was instrumental in the development and adoption of the Neutrality Acts passed between 1935 and 1937. To mobilize antiwar sentiments, he helped establish the America First Committee.

Upon the bombing of Pearl Harbor on the evening of December 7, 1941, Nye addressed an America First meeting in Pittsburgh, and was quoted as saying, "this was just what Britain had planned for us" and that "we have been maneuvered into this by the President." However, the next day Nye joined the rest of the Senate in voting for a unanimous declaration of war.^[4]

Nye was a Freemason and attended Grace Lutheran Church in Washington, DC. He gained further prominence in 1941 when he accused Hollywood of attempting to “drug the reason of the American people,“ and “rouse war fever.“ He was particularly hostile to Warner Brothers.^[5]

Post Senate years in Washington

Defeated in his re-election attempt by a Democrat, John Moses, in 1944, Nye chose to remain in the Washington area. He and Marguerite had purchased 3 acres (12,000 m²) of pasture land in Chevy Chase, part of a farm on a hill above Rock Creek Park. They had designed and built a brick, farmstyle home and Gerald, who loved gardening and nature, had planted trees and dug gardens on the open acres. Their sons, Jerry and Dick had been born in 1943 and 44.

Nye organized and became president of Records Engineering, Inc., in DC. The pre-computer age firm created, organized and managed records of industrial and government clients. In 1960 he was appointed to the FHA as Assistant to the Commissioner and in charge of housing for the elderly. In 1963, he accepted an appointment to the professional staff of the US Senate Committee on Aging. 1966 saw his grand retirement party at the US Capitol. It was attended by the Senators Robert Kennedy and Ted Kennedy and hosted by the witty Senator Everett Dirksen who presented Senator Nye with a typewriter and desk lamp and orders to begin his memoirs. Never really retiring, he became a consultant to churches and private groups desiring government funds for the building of retirement housing.

Death

A life long smoker, Senator Nye had arterial disease and surgeries replacing the arteries in his legs with plastic, state of the art, arteries. Close to the end of his life, a blood clot went to his lung. He was 78 years old, recovering from that experience but still weak, when a doctor mistakenly prescribed a drug containing penicillin to which he was known to be allergic. His body was too weak to recover from that shock. He went into a coma, the family was called and the decision made to turn off life support. He died very soon after that. It was July 17, 1971. Services were held at Grace Lutheran Church in Washington and burial at Fort Lincoln Cemetery in Brentwood, MD. As a US Senator, Nye was allowed the privilege and distinction of burial in Arlington Cemetery, but he believed that those places should be reserved for those who served in the military. He and Marguerite bought a plot on a hillside near chapel in Lincoln Cemetery some years in advance of his death.

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b} */ Wayne S. Cole, Senator Gerald P. Nye and American Foreign Relations, Minneapolis, 1962, p.68
2. ^ quoting the author: Barbara W. Tuchman, "The March of Folly", Random House, New York, 1984, p.382
3. ^ quoting the authro: Barbara W. Tuchman, "The March of Folly", Random House, New York, 1984, p.382
4. ^ Current Biography 1941, pp 619-21
5. ^ America First: the Anti-War Movement, Charles Lindbergh and the Second World War, 1940 - 1941

• Gerald Nye at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress

United States Senate
Preceded by Edwin F. Ladd	United States Senator (Class 3) from North Dakota 1925 – 1945 Served alongside: Lynn Frazier, William Langer	Succeeded by John Moses

v • d • e United States Senators from North Dakota Class 1 Casey • Roach • McCumber • Frazier • Langer • Brunsdale • Q. Burdick • J. Burdick • Conrad Class 3 Pierce • Hansbrough • Johnson • Thompson • Purcell • Gronna • Ladd • Nye • Moses • Young • Andrews • Conrad • Dorgan

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