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When Adlai was twelve, he suffered one of the most traumatic experiences that could befall any boy—an experience which, according to some friends, was to affect him for the rest of his life. Among several guests in the Stevenson home one night was a military-school student who offered to perform the manual of arms. Excited, young Adlai ran to get a .22-cal. pump rifle, watched wide-eyed while the cadet went through the ritual. When it was over, Adlai took the rifle, began to mimic the performance. The weapon accidentally fired, killing Adlai's 15-year-old cousin, Ruth Mary Merwin.
Reluctance. Educated at Choate, Princeton and Northwestern University Law School, Stevenson joined one of Chicago's top law firms. In 1928 he married Heiress Ellen Borden, whose family made a fortune in oil and taxicabs. Adlai and Ellen had three sons: Adlai III, now 34, Borden, 32, and John Fell, 29.
Stevenson's true calling was public service, and Ellen detested the political life. In 1949, while he was Governor of Illinois, she insisted on a divorce. It was a bitter blow to Stevenson, who, as recently as 1960, said wistfully: "I would rather be married than President." To day, Ellen Borden Stevenson, 56, lives as a recluse in a dingy greystone Chicago house on which the mortgage was recently foreclosed; she has gone through most of her family fortune, and her three sons have filed suit to supervise her financial affairs, charging that she is incapable of managing them herself.
During the early years of the New Deal, loyal Democrat Stevenson worked as a lawyer for the Agricultural Adjustment Administration and the Federal Alcohol Control Administration. He served as an aide to Navy Secretary Frank Knox during World War II and later wrote of that period: "They used to say that if you worked in wartime Washington, you would get one of three things: galloping frustration, ulcers, or a sense of humor. I guess I got them all, and I also got a great education in war, the world, our Government and my fellow man under every sort of trial and tension." In February 1945, Stevenson moved over to the State Department, where, as an assistant to Secretary Edward Stettinius, he helped in the creation of the United Nations. "After years of preoccupation with war," he said, "the satisfaction of having a part in the organized search for the conditions and mechanics of peace completed my circle."
Of course his circle was far from completed. In 1948 he was chosen by Illinois' Democratic leaders to run for Governor against Republican Dwight Green, whose administration had been splotched by scandal; Stevenson won by a record 572,000 votes and set about riding close herd over a heavily Republican legislature; in 1951 alone, he vetoed no fewer than 134 bills.