May 30, 1989: Claude Pepper dies after 60 years of public service
 Claude Pepper
Claude Pepper represented Florida in the U.S. Senate from 1936 to 1951, then spent 36 more years serving his Miami area district in the House of Representatives before dying at age 88 while still in office.
Raised as a farmboy in Arkansas, Pepper graduated from Harvard Law School in 1924 and moved to Perry, Florida, the following year. He was elected to the Florida House three years later and to the U.S. Senate in 1936, where he supported President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal policies. He was ousted 14 years later after a nasty campaign that saw challenger George Smathers portray him as anti-business and pro-Communist. He returned to Congress as a House member in 1962 and became a powerful figure by launching initiatives to help the poor and elderly, supporting civil rights legislation, chairing the Select Committee on Aging, expanding the National Institutes of Health, and rallying the elderly to protect Medicare and make Social Security untouchable during the conservative Reagan era. Read more in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Claude Pepper Dies at 88 |
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