EDMONDSON, EDMOND AUGUSTUS (1919-1990) 

Born in Muskogee, Oklahoma, on April 7, 1919, and son of Edmond Augustus and Esther Pullen Edmondson, Edmond A. "Ed" Edmondson graduated from Muskogee Junior College in 1938 and the University of Oklahoma in 1940. His father was a Muskogee County commissioner. His brother, J. Howard Edmondson, was Oklahoma governor and U.S. senator. While attending college, Ed Edmondson worked for a Muskogee newspaper and United Press International. From 1940 to 1943 Edmondson was a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington, D.C. During World War II he became a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy while serving in the Pacific. He was also in the U.S. Naval Reserve from 1946 to 1970. He married June Maureen Pilley on March 5, 1944. Their children were June Ellen, James Edmond (who became a district judge), William Andrew (who became Oklahoma attorney general), John, and Brian. Edmondson was the Washington, D.C., correspondent for several Oklahoma newspapers from 1946 to 1947. He received a law degree from Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., in 1947 and returned to Muskogee where he was Muskogee County attorney from 1949 to 1952.   In 1952 Oklahoma's Second District voters first elected Ed Edmondson as a Democrat to the U.S. House of Representatives; he served from 1953 to 1973. By the end of his congressional career he had attained considerable seniority on the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee and Public Works Committee. He was chair of the Mines and Mining Subcommittee and the second-ranking Democrat on the Indian Affairs Subcommittee. Other subcommittees on which he sat were Environment; Irrigation and Reclamation; Public Lands; Flood Control and Internal Development; Investigation and Oversight; Roads; Conservation and Watershed Development; and Economic Development Programs. He played a crucial role in passage of legislation creating the Arkansas River Navigation System and Copan Dam.   When he first went to Congress, he was a grass-roots liberal, and throughout his tenure he was prolabor. He supported Pres. John F. Kennedy's New Frontier legislation, but during Lyndon Johnson's administration he became more conservative. In 1972 and 1974 Edmondson ran for the U.S. Senate. His campaigns focused on his conservatism, his dislike of Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern, and his support for economic measures to help the "little man." Nonetheless, Republicans Dewey Bartlett and Henry Bellmon defeated him. In 1978 he tried again but lost his party's nomination to David Boren.   In later years Edmondson was an attorney in Muskogee. He was involved with the Oklahoma Scenic Rivers Commission and the preservation of the Illinois River. He died in Muskogee on December 8, 1990. [Source: "Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture"]  

EDMONDSON, JAMES HOWARD (1925-1971)

Oklahoma's sixteenth governor was born on September 27, 1925, in Muskogee, Oklahoma, to Edmond Augustus and Esther Pullen Edmondson. The elder Edmondson instilled a love of politics in both J. Howard and his older brother, Ed, a long-term congressman. J. Howard graduated from Muskogee High School, briefly attended the University of Oklahoma, and joined the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1942. Edmondson completed flight training but did not serve overseas. After the war he graduated from the university with a law degree in August 1948. He had married his childhood sweetheart, Jeannette Bartleson, in May 1946, and the couple had a son, James, Jr., and two daughters, Jeanne and Patricia.   After graduating, Edmondson returned to Muskogee and served as law clerk for Federal Judge Eugene Rice before joining Harold Shoemake in the practice of law. Unsuccessful in a race for a seat in the legislature in 1950, he moved to Tulsa in 1953, accepting an appointment by Tulsa County Attorney Robert Wheeler. Edmondson's reputation as a successful prosecutor grew rapidly after he obtained convictions of several corrupt county and state officials. In 1954 when Wheeler did not seek reelection, Edmondson was elected Tulsa County attorney. He was reelected in 1956. Edmondson announced his candidacy for governor on December 7, 1957. Reform became the hallmark of his campaign and administration. A political unknown, Edmondson won the Democratic primary, then crushed his opponent in the general election, winning by the largest margin in the state's history. At thirty-three, Edmondson became the youngest governor in the state's history and in the nation at the time. Edmondson interpreted his victory as a public mandate for reform. Many "old guard" members of the legislature disagreed. Edmondson had promised to send a proposal to repeal prohibition to a vote of the people while strictly enforcing the law. True to his pledge, as the legislature worked on the referendum, he vigorously enforced prohibition. Oklahoma came closer to being truly "dry" than ever before. Repeal passed overwhelmingly. By the end of the longest legislative session in the state's history, Edmondson had gained many reforms. In addition to repeal of prohibition and a liquor control measure, he had persuaded the legislature to adopt a merit system, central purchasing, a withholding tax plan, and several "housekeeping" measures that eased the strain on state finance. He had also obtained a financing plan for two state turnpikes and creation of the Oklahoma Capitol Improvement Authority. Many of his other proposals were rejected, including a constitutional highway commission, a legislative apportionment proposal, and the removal of gasoline tax revenues from control of county commissioners. Undeterred, Edmondson quickly began to push these three proposals through initiative petitions. All three petitions failed. In pushing their adoption Edmondson permanently alienated important elements of the Democratic Party, and by the fall of 1960, only half way through his term, his mandate was gone. The balance of his term saw little in the way of additional reform. He successfully defeated attempts to repeal the gains from the 1959 legislative session but achieved little more. Then two weeks before his term ended, when it seemed Edmondson's political career was at an end, Oklahoma's U.S. Senator Robert S. Kerr died. This allowed Edmondson to arrange his own appointment to the Senate seat and gave him sixteen months to rebuild his political support. In 1964 Edmondson bid for a full Senate term but was defeated. His fight for reform had earned him too many enemies. He had neglected to mend political fences, and he angered the Kerr family and friends by not appointing Robert Kerr, Jr., to his father's vacant seat. In 1964 the Kerr organization and money helped retire Edmondson permanently to private life. From the end of his brief Senate term in 1965 until his death of an apparent heart attack in 1971, Edmondson was a private citizen engaged in the practice of law. At his death Oklahomans were beginning to realize their state was better because he had served them as governor. Before he was forty years old, J. Howard Edmondson had achieved more significant reform than any governor before him and had produced one of the most colorful eras in Oklahoma's political history.
[Source: "Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture"]  

BACK