Willie was born 48 years ago. Elwood, Indiana, Wis grandparents came to this country after the collapse of a revolutionary "movement—in Germany. They spelled their name Willeke.
His parents wore both lawyers, his mother having been the first wom: admitted to" the bar in. Indi Wille, whose boyish reading tas med' from poetry. to the more str use seieneas, developed a taste for law from his parents and, with It, '2. considerable training in' Tiberal Sociology. At 16 he helped his father, F. Wille, prepare a ease for whaur in opposition to a In high schoo! college Willicie distinguished himself as a debater of slightly radical tinge. "Me became 4 follower of the late Senator Robert M. LaFollette after me the Wise cousin. Progressive speare During summer holidays Willkie learned money by working in, harvest fields from Oklaloma to the Canad border. The World War interrupted his efforts to get started in. the law, He served in France. with the a25th Field Artillery and after the Armistice joined the law firm of Mather and Nesbitt in Akron, Ohio, first practicing for a time in Fort Wayne, Then A Democrat Willi was a Democrat in those days.
Indiana party leaders wanted to Ket him into polities, but he resisted the temptation after receiving, from a trusted friend, the advice to "forget it." Otherwise, he might have run for Congress, Transformed Into Republica Jong fight with the New Deal ial, apparently, affect Willkio's val good Tumour, but it did form him from a Democrat into a Republican.
Before the change, in 1995, Willkie remarked that he wished he had back $150 he had contributed to President Roosevelt's campaign fund. Three of his Democratic friends in Akron, acfonsing him of having become a plutocrat," at once offered to. reimburse him and he accepted the offer.
All that was in a spirit of good clean fun, but last January it became apparent that Willkie was more than Just "disgruntled" with the party. In the previous election, it was disclose', the had registered as a Republican But Republican or Democrat, Will-Kie still considers himself a. liberal, nul a liberal is "a man who belicw=s in freedom for himself and for other
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.