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Pappy O'Daniel born in Ohio
On this day in 1890, future Texas governor and U.S. senator W. Lee
(Pappy) O'Daniel was born in Malta, Ohio. He came to Texas in 1925 as
sales manager of the Burrus Mill and Elevator Company in Fort Worth,
manufacturer of Light Crust Flour. He took over the company's radio
advertising in 1928 and hired and named the Light Crust Doughboys, the
influential western swing band that featured Bob Wills and Milton Brown.
O'Daniel organized his own flour company in 1935 and filed for governor
in 1938. Accompanied by his band, the Hillbilly Boys, he attracted huge
audiences, especially in rural areas. He won the 1938 election and was
reelected in 1940. In a special U.S. Senate election in 1941, he edged
Lyndon Johnson in a flurry of controversial late returns. In a desperate
reelection fight the next year, O'Daniel charged that the professional
politicians, the politically controlled newspapers, and the "communistic
labor leader racketeers" were conspiring against him, but he hung on to
enough rural and elderly voters to eke out a win. O'Daniel was
ineffective in the Senate, however, and by 1948, with public opinion
polls giving him only 7 percent support, he announced that he would not
run again since there was only slight hope of saving America from the
communists. He bought a ranch near Fort Worth, invested in Dallas real
estate, and founded an insurance company. He attempted comebacks in the
Democratic gubernatorial primaries of 1956 and 1958, but failed to make
the runoff on both occasions. O'Daniel died in Dallas in 1969.
- Links to Related Handbook of Texas Online Articles
- O'DANIEL, WILBERT LEE [PAPPY]
- LIGHT CRUST DOUGHBOYS
- WILLS, JAMES ROBERT
- W. LEE O'DANIEL AND HIS HILLBILLY BOYS
- GREAT DEPRESSION
- JOHNSON, LYNDON BAINES
- GOVERNOR
- DEMOCRATIC PARTY
- Other Texas Day by Day Articles for This Date
- Students enroll in first Texas college for blacks (1878)
- New carbon black plant opens in Panhandle (1926)
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