Passed Vice Presidents - # 38 – Hubert H. Humphrey

Grave of Hubert Humphrey (18 July 2023)

Served under Lyndon Johnson

20 January 1965 – 20 January 1969

Preceded by # 37 – Lyndon Johnson

Succeeded by # 39 – Spiro T. Agnew

Born – 27 May 1911

Died – 13 January 1978 (age 66)

Buried – Lakewood Cemetery, Minneapolis, MN

Date Visited – 18 July 2023

With the assassination of John F. Kennedy, vice president Lyndon Johnson, ascended to the presidency. The VP office was vacant until the election of 1964 when Johnson defeated Barry Goldwater. His running mate, Minnesota senator Hubert Humphrey became our 38th vice president.

Born in South Dakota, the son of a druggist, Humphrey left college after one year to instead earn a pharmacist’s license and help in his father’s store. Eventually, Humphrey completed his academic training and joined the faculty at Macalester College in St. Paul. Political involvement grew from there. He helped found the Minnesota Democratic-Farm-Labor Party in 1944 and was elected the mayor of Minneapolis.

The official Vice President’s Portrait – 1965

(from Google Images)

At the 1948 Democratic National Convention, the young rising star in the party fired up the meeting by forcing a vote to put a stronger civil rights position on the party’s platform. Of course, this upset the Confederates in the crowd who believed that White supremacy and segregation of the races was still the most important issue. The southerners bolted the convention and formed their own party. Called the Dixiecrats, they hoped to spoil Harry Truman’s election. Strom Thurmond did carry four states but the favorable reaction from the rest of the country boosted Truman to that huge upset win over Tom Dewey.

Grave of Hubert Humphrey,

Lakewood Cemetery, Minneapolis, MN (18 July 2023)

Below his name is the following quote from the man whose nickname was ‘The Happy Warrior.’

“I have enjoyed my life, its disappointments outweighed by its pleasures. I have loved my country in a way that some people consider sentimental and out of style. I still do and I remain an optimist, with joy, without apology, about this country and about the American experiment in democracy.”

Humphrey was elected to the Senate after that. A Democrat hadn’t done that since before the Civil War. He was reelected twice and rose to be Majority Whip in the early ‘60’s. He was the lead author of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and introduced the legislation that created the Peace Corps. He seemed the ideal running mate for the Texan LBJ in the 1964 election. The public agreed and gave them a landslide victory over the far-right Goldwater.

After his failed presidential run four years later, he returned to the Senate where he served until cancer ended his life in 1978 at age 66.

Grave of Hubert Humphrey,

Lakewood Cemetery, Minneapolis, MN (18 July 2023)

Flanking the central marker with Humphrey’s quote are the

seals of the State of Minnesota and the City of Minneapolis (here)

and the United States Senate and the Vice President.

Footstone at Grave of Muriel Humphrey Brown,

Lakewood Cemetery, Minneapolis, MN (18 July 2023)

In 1981, Muriel Humphrey married Max Brown, a friend from childhood. She appreciated the new life and its freedom away from politics and formalities. They had seventeen years together before Muriel passed and reunited with Hubert.

Hubert was for fair labor practices, regulating economic activity, equal rights and basic universal freedoms...a prototype liberal...before Fox and the far right made it a dirty word they couldn’t say without sneering. I can imagine him now defending his liberal bona fides and resisting the left’s capitulation on the label. We’re ‘Progressives’ now. Is that better?

Footstone at Grave of Hubert Humphrey,

Lakewood Cemetery, Minneapolis, MN (18 July 2023)

It’s a shame that at the time of my very first election, I didn’t know Mr. Humphrey better...and that I didn’t realize his opponent, Richard Nixon, was the scum bucket he was. 1968 was such a turbulent, upsetting year and this immature, draft-eligible, city kid was determined to cast his first vote for a change from the Johnson administration’s miserable prosecution of that failed escapade in Viet Nam. I wish I wasn’t so focused on shooting the grave to pause and apologize to the man for not being more understanding in 1968.