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When Estes Kefauver was eleven, the family suffered a tragedy that shaped his life. His brother Robert, two years older, was the great light of the Kefauver family. "He was the bright one," says Estes. Adds Kefauver's Aunt Lottie: "Robert was the smartest child that ever lived. He was the one the family pinned their hopes on. Estes was just the sweetest child in the world." One day Estes, Robert and some other tads were swimming in the nearby Tellico River. Suddenly Robert went under. Estes was on the other side of the river, arrived after the other boys had pulled Robert out, worked desperately to help revive his brother. But Robert died convulsively a few days later.
For months Estes mourned, brooding alone in his room through long, tortured hours. When he emerged, he was changed. Says Kefauver: "I became more serious and studious. I felt I had to do better to make up to my parents for his loss." Many of the paradoxes and contradictions of Estes Kefauver may be explained by a lifelong friend, who says: "It seems as though Keef were trying to live the life of two boys." One boy might have settled for life as a gentleman farmer or a lawyer. But the other had visions of a greater destiny—as President of the U.S.
The Coon in the Drawer. Kefauver has never since let his eye stray far from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. "There have," he says, "been active times thinking about it and inactive times." His entire career testifies to the fact that the active times far outnumber the inactive. Even in high school, when asked to sign a girl friend's album, Estes Kefauver stated his ambition: "To be President." He began as a campus politician at Tennessee, where he was known as "Big Stuff" in tribute to his achievements as senior-class president, editor of the campus paper, football tackle and star discus thrower. In 1939 he cheerfully gave up his lucrative Chattanooga law practice to enter, and win, a special House election. Re-elected four times, he saw a chance in late 1947 to move up the political ladder to the U.S. Senate.
To get there, Kefauver had to beat both the incumbent and the hand-picked candidate of Memphis' mighty political boss, Ed Crump. When Kefauver began making headway, Crump lashed out viciously with a full-page newspaper ad that said: "Kefauver reminds me of the pet coon that puts its foot in an open drawer in your room, but invariably turns its head while its foot is feeling around in the drawer. The coon hopes, through its cunning by turning its head, he will deceive any onlookers as to where his foot is and what it is into." Estes Kefauver replied promptly, and with a humor rare in him. Donning a coonskin cap, he told his audiences: "I may be a pet coon, but I'll never be Mr. Crump's pet coon."