Former U.S. Sen. Wallace F. Bennett will be remembered as a quiet, strong man who served 24 years in the nation's highest legislative body, entering the Senate when Harry Truman was president, leaving just after Richard Nixon resigned.
Bennett died in his sleep early Sunday morning. He was 95. Son Bob Bennett, who now holds his father's U.S. Senate seat, said his father fell Saturday in his home. "But he didn't break anything. Up until 18 hours before his death, Dad was well for being 95, lucid."Wallace Bennett was born in 1898, just two years after Utah became a state. He was first elected to the Senate in 1950. He won four terms, retiring in early 1975.
He was swept into office in the pro-Republican years following World War II. He saw some of the best years of the Republican Party - the Eisenhower administration - and some of the worst, including Barry Goldwater's disastrous presidential defeat in 1964 - the last time Utahns voted for a Democratic president - and Richard Nixon's resignation in 1974.
In 1992, Bennett saw his youngest son, Bob, win his old U.S. Senate seat. The former senator had been in declining physical health for some time. The night his son was elected to the U.S. Senate, the elder Bennett appeared at the victory party in a wheelchair.
"Dad was remembered by a number of my (current U.S. Senate) colleagues," son Bob recalled Sunday. "He was known (in his Senate work) for being an expert on business, tax law, the economy; for his work on the Senate's Finance Committee.
"They say Dad was always well prepared for his committee work; he's still remembered as being able to question a witness without having a staffer whisper the questions in his ear."
Bob Bennett says he got to know his father best when they worked together on his father's political campaigns and in Washington, D.C. "Being the youngest child, our careers crossed. I worked in the family business at first, then with Dad the last 12 years he was in the Senate. He was my mentor. The highest compliment someone pays me now (in the U.S. Senate) is to say to me, `You're just like your father.' "
While Bennett was at the seat of American power for 24 years, he left that behind him when he retired in 1975. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he was often seen walking downtown Salt Lake streets, sometimes carrying a small satchel on his back and talking to old friends he happened to meet.
Former Gov. Norm Bangerter remembers addressing the retired Bennett as "senator" and then asking him how it felt to be away from Washington. Bennett brushed aside the title. "That was just a job I did for a while," Bennett answered. "It is not who I am."
Wallace Bennett was born into a well-known Utah family. Bennett Paint and Glass was already a going concern when young Bennett worked in the family business as a teenager before World War I. After graduating from the University of Utah, he worked for a year as a high school principal in Manassa, Colo., before returning to Utah and going to work full time in the family business in 1920.
Bennett had known Frances Grant, youngest daughter of then-LDS Church President Heber J. Grant, for years before the two actually started to date. They married in 1922, with Mrs. Bennett remembering years later how calm young Wallace was when he went to the Church Administration Building, made an appointment with President Grant and asked him for his daughter's hand.
In 1938, Wallace Bennett was made president of the paint and glass firm. And in 1939 he was named president of Bennett Motor Co., which later became Bennett Ford. After a successful business career, which culminated with Bennett being elected chairman of the National Association of Manufacturers in 1949, Bennett decided to enter politics at age 51.
Campaigns for the U.S. Senate were the only races he ever entered. He never lost an election.
Although a wealthy businessman, Bennett, like many Americans, discovered the post-World War II housing crunch after his first election to the Senate. After selling the family home on Wasatch Drive in 1953 because his five children were grown, Bennett and his wife had to move into a basement apartment for a short time; no other accommodations were to be found in Salt Lake City.
Bennett was a conservative, cutting his political teeth during the early Eisenhower administration in a Congress dominated by investigations of "un-American" activities. News clippings show that in 1953, he gave several speeches in Utah saying that the government should investigate "communists," but that investigations should avoid personalities and propaganda.
In 1954, he supported giving Hawaii statehood as a good way to fight Asian communism. However, Bennett made a mark for himself in the Senate in 1954 when he introduced a special "censure" bill to punish Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wis., for his excesses in labeling various Americans communists.
More than once, Wallace Bennett defended the agricultural policies of Eisenhower's secretary of Agriculture, Ezra Taft Benson. Bennett said critics of the administration's farm policies were afraid to go after Eisenhower, the popular World War II general-turned-president, so they attacked Benson - who today is president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
But Bennett won't be remembered for his anti-communist activities nor his agricultural priorities. Utahns know him best for his fight for water, specifically the Central Utah Project. The project was approved and received its first funding during his early years in the Senate. Little did Bennett know that the CUP would take years - and billions of dollars more than anticipated - to be finished. However, it is a legacy that will provide drinking water for the Salt Lake Valley for years to come.
Bennett, who became bald in his 20s, used to joke about a nickname given him by a newspaper writer: "The Solemn Solon From Salt Lake." Actually, Bennett was a man with a good sense of humor who wrote two books: "Faith and Freedom" and "Why I Am a Mormon."
As a young man, Bennett and two male friends traveled through Utah's southern national parks. He decided then that is where he would honeymoon, and he and his bride, Frances, did indeed honeymoon by camping in the parks in 1922, in those days a rough proposition.
A man who liked to learn by doing, Bennett asked a horse guide in Zion Canyon to give him a spirited mount. "OK," said the outfitter, "But just don't kick him," Frances Bennett recounts in her autobiography, "Glimpse of a Mormon Family." Bennett couldn't pass up the challenge. He kneed the horse, which promptly bucked Bennett off, right over the horse's head.
Funeral services will be held Wednesday at noon in the Monument Park LDS Stake Center, 1320 S. Wasatch Drive.