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Stennis: 41 years of service and respect
“I shall go to the Senate without obligations or commitments, save to serve the plain people of Mississippi.”
—	U.S. Sen.-elect John C. Stennis, Nov. 5,1947.
By Dan Davis and Jeff Copeskey
Clarion-Ledger Staff Writers______________
DEKALB — John Cornelius Stennis has been imbued with one of the rare human qualities — the ability to gamer near universal respect and admiration.
His impeccable character, his erudite and humble demeanor, his sense of duty and honor, his reverence for the U.S. Constitution and his confidence in his fellow man have coalesced to shape a unique individual.
“(An) astute student of international affairs, talented in public speech, polished in manners, deferential and courteous but very firm in his convictions, a man of culture,” wrote the Webster Progress of Stennis in September 1947.
“A scholar and a gentleman.”
The passage of time has done little to erode that perception.
Serving in an era where the shadow of scandal and unseemly conduct pervaded the halls of government, Stennis has held sacred the public trust.
“My mother told me over and over that you are the same type of old person that you are as a young person — and that’s true of Senator Stennis,” said Edna Lowiy of DeKalb, a longtime friend of the Stennis household.
Lowry, 81, first met the then-28-year-old Stennis in 1929 — the year the coun-try began its descent into the Great Depression.
“He was always full of life and full of ambition,” said Lowry, who in 1947 campaigned on the then-circuit judge’s behalf in north Mississippi during the special senatorial election.
Stennis still lives in the unassuming one-story white clapboard house he built in 1930, located a few dozen yards from Mississippi 39.
The Associated Press
U.S. Sen. John. C. Stennis in 1954. In April of that year, Stennis became the first Democrat to urge censure of U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, who made allegations of widespread infiltration of Communists in the federal government.
His office, in a nondescript red brick building across from the county courthouse, has a simple sign above the door: “John C. Stennis, Lawyer.”
It is a decidedly, and deceptively, modest description for a drawling, country-born lawyer who rose to become a confidant of American presidents and a major player in the epochal events that led the
United States through the Cold War and the Southern civil rights movement onward past the Watergate scandal and into the Reagan revolution.
One of seven children, Stennis was bom on a Kemper County farm 36 years after the end of the Civil War. He attended county schools and graduated from Kemper County Agricultural High
For 6 decades Senator John Stennis has demonstrated that strength of character is the key to both political, longevity and public respect. He inspires the best in others. Stennis is a great man and each one of us in the Senate is richer for the time we have shared with him.
Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
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School in 1919.
At 14, Stennis landed one of his first jobs — as a soda jerk in a drugstore then owned by his brother. He worked off and on at the store, which was frequented by lawyers with business at the county courthouse across the square, until he finished college.
“I was just like all the rest of the boys around here,” Stennis said in a 1967 interview. “We went fishing and hunting and swimming in the summer. But I studied pretty hard. My mother saw to that. And my sisters were both teachers, and they pushed me.”
After receiving his bachelor’s degree from Mississippi State University — then Mississippi A&M College — Stennis went on to receive his law degree and a Phi Beta Kappa key from the University of Virginia in 1928, the year his political career started.
In an interview before his death, Turner Catledge, the former executive editor of The New York Times, remembered Stennis arriving on the Mississippi State campus “with a whole group of Kemper County boys.”
Catledge, who attended college with Stennis, recalled that the future senator stood out among his peers. “He was the intellectual, the one who helped others with their homework.
“And he was a great speaker and was a member of the debating team. Gangs of us used to gather in the rooms of the dormi-tories. You alwayskrfew when John Sten-~ nis was around. He was the bellwether,” Catledge said.
Elected to two terms in the state House of Representatives, Stennis successfully campaigned for the district prosecuting attorney post, in which he served until 1935.
At age 35, then-Gov. Hugh White named the lean and square-jawed Stennis to fill a circuit judge vacancy, making Stennis the state’s youngest member of the bench. He held that position through See THEODORE, 31
Special assistance
The Clarion-Ledger/Jackson Daily News wishes to thank the following people and organizations for their assistance in this report:
■	Mississippi State University Library, special collections.
■	Gannett News Service.
■	Joe Atkins, reporter, Gannett News Service.
■	Rex Buffington, press secretary for Sen. John C. Stennis.
■	The staff of Sen. John C.
Stennis.	»
■	The Mississippi Department of Archives and History.
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