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"I'm Going to Yale." Legend has it that Carey Estes Kefauver was a poor-but-honest youngster raised in a rough Tennessee mountain cabin. This is just a legend. The Kefauvers were a branch of one of the first families of Madisonville. Tenn., a small (pop. 1,487) town in the foothills of the Great Smokies. Aside from Depression stringencies, father Robert Cooke Kefauver was comfortably fixed. He owned a local hardware store and served five times as mayor of Madisonville. To pick up extra money and toughen himself for football at the University of Tennessee, young "Keef" worked through one summer in a Harlan County (Ky.) coal mine. There he lived in a sweaty attic with four other miners and developed a real sympathy for coal miners and unions.
At Tennessee he went Kappa Sigma, high-jumped, set a local discus record and played tackle on the varsity football squad. He was a good campus politician and was elected president of the student body. After getting his A.B. (in 1924), he taught math and coached football for a year in a high school at Hot Springs, Ark. One day he told a friend: "If I go on to be a football coach, I'll be through at 40. I'm going to Yale and be a lawyer."
The Country Boy. He graduated, from Yale Law School in 1927, and was a good lawyer right from the beginning. He turned out to have a special way with juries that brought him a bid from the topflight Chattanooga law firm of Sizer and Chambliss. "Keef handled a jury like a country boy," said one of his ex-partners recently. "He would establish himself as a country boy, then recite the facts and lead the jury along. He used language the jurors could understand. He never tried to be eloquent or quoted poetry."
On a blind date one night in 1934 Keef met Nancy Piggott, a lively redhead who was visiting her well-to-do aunt in Chattanooga. Nancy was an American girl born near Glasgow, Scotland. Her U.S.-born father, Stephen Piggott, was a designer of marine engines for a Scottish firm, became a British subject and was subsequently knighted. Keef followed Nancy home to Scotland, and married her there. Back in Chattanooga, Keef's new wife—witty, wise and devoted—was a great social asset to a close-mouthed young lawyer. They were a popular couple. In 1937 the Chattanooga Junior Chamber of Commerce named Keef the young man of the year.
There are some friends who think that Nancy started Kefauver toward a political career. Others say he has wanted to be President ever since he was born. At any rate, he joined a young reform group called the Volunteers, and after an unsuccessful try for state senator in 1938, easily captured a congressional vacancy the following year. In Washington he was assigned to the important judiciary committee, developed a keen interest in federal government, and turned out a book on congressional reorganization, A 20th Century Congress. But in his nine years in the House, young Congressman Kefauver was noted principally for championing TVA, voting the straight New Deal ticket, and —most remarkable of all—working hard and keeping his mouth shut.