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In school, Dick's marks were only fair. He went to Gordon Military College at Barnesville, Ga., and to the State A. & M. school at Powder Springs, where board was $6.40 a month and each student did 36 hours' work every month. At the University of Georgia, he was both a serious student and a cheerleader, but no campus politician. After he got his law degree in 1918, he did a short stint in the Naval Reserve, then returned to Winder and hung out his shingle.
On his 23rd birthday, he was elected to the Georgia general assembly. He has been in public office ever since, has never lost an election. For ten years Russell served in the assembly, became its parliamentary expert and its presiding officer. Then he decided to move up. In 1931, Chief Justice Richard Brevard Russell Sr. swore in Richard Brevard Russell Jr. as governor of Georgia. He was 33, the youngest governor in the state's history.
From 102 to 18. Taking over in the depth of the depression, the new governor was forced to slash state expenditures 32%, reduced the number of state departments from 102 to 18, wiped out 26 boards of trustees and substituted one board of regents to run the state's higher-education system. He was just getting into full stride in the middle of his first term when Georgia's Senator William J. Harris died. Governor Russell ran for the unexpired term, beat Veteran Congressman Charles R. Crisp, dean of Georgia's house delegation, in a red-hot primary, and went to Washington at 35, the youngest member of the U.S. Senate.
In the 20 years since then, Georgia's Russell has become one of the most respected men in the Senate. On the Senate floor, he is polite to the point of courtliness. In the cloakrooms, he manages to give more favors than he asks, and probably has more colleagues under obligation to him than any other Senator.
Russell works long hours, carefully studies every important piece of legislation, has a knowledge of Senate rules unequaled on Capitol Hill. Once, yielding to Russell in debate, Illinois' Senator Paul Douglas said: "I yield, though my knees are knocking, to one of the subtlest men and one of the most able field generals who ever appeared on the floor of the Senate."
As chairman of the vital Armed Services Committee, Russell has gained a knowledge of military affairs respected throughout the Pentagon. He has been highly successful in translating from the Pentagonese for other members of the Senate. Last year, after presiding over the explosive MacArthur hearings, he won compliments from both Harry Truman and Douglas MacArthur.
Second Bachelor. In the highly unlikely event of Dick Russell's becoming President, he would be the second bachelor-President in U.S. history.* His mother always urged him to pay some attention to the new schoolteacher or some other Georgia maid, but his father's advice seemed to have more effect. Said the judge: "Marry your work if you are going into a public career."
A bachelor-Senator might become quite a social lion in Washington, but Dick Russell is no partygoer. "I got caught up with that during my first year in Washington," he says. "I went up there with the country idea that if you were invited anywhere you had to go or you would be impolite. That liked to killed me the first year."