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Senate Years of Service: 1947-1957 Party: Republican
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McCARTHY, Joseph Raymond, a Senator from Wisconsin; born in Grand Chute, Outagamie County,
Wis., November 14, 1908; attended a one-room country school; worked on a farm;
at the age of nineteen moved to Manawa, Wis., and enrolled in a high school;
while working in a grocery store and ushering at a theater in the evenings,
completed a four-year course in one year; graduated from Marquette University
at Milwaukee, Wis., with a law degree in 1935; admitted to the bar the same
year; commenced practice in Waupaca, and in 1936 moved to Shawano, Wis., and
continued to practice law; elected circuit judge of the tenth judicial circuit
of Wisconsin in 1939; while serving in this capacity enlisted in 1942 in the
United States Marine Corps; resigned as a lieutenant in 1945; unsuccessful
candidate for the Republican nomination for United States Senator in 1944 while
in military service; reelected circuit judge of Wisconsin in 1945 while still
in the Marine Corps; elected as a Republican to the United States Senate in
1946; reelected in 1952 and served from January 3, 1947, until his death;
co-chairman, Joint Committee on the Library (Eighty-third Congress), chairman,
Committee on Government Operations (Eighty-third Congress); used his position
as chairman of the Committee on Government Operations and its Permanent
Subcommittee on Investigations to launch investigations designed to document
charges of Communists in government; censured by the Senate on December 2,
1954, for behavior that was contrary to senatorial traditions; died in the
naval hospital at Bethesda, Md., May 2, 1957; funeral services were held in the
Chamber of the United States Senate; interment in St. Marys Cemetery,
Appleton, Wis.
Bibliography
American National Biography;
Dictionary of American Biography; Griffith, Robert.
The Politics of Fear: Joseph R. McCarthy and the Senate.
Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1970; Oshinsky, David.
A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joseph McCarthy. New
York: Free Press, 1983.
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