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The upcoming presidential race is certain to be hotly contested as Joe Biden and Donald Trump duke it out to see who will lead the country for the next four years.
A century ago, our area played a role twice by having men on the major party tickets twice in a span of eight years. Charles Gates Dawes, was from Marietta and was vice-president under Calvin Coolidge from 1925 until 1929.
Less than a decade later Alf Landon would become the Republican nominee for president in 1936.
Alf Landon moved here as a small child. His dad, John Landon worked for the Union Oil Company and first moved to Elba, a small community in northern Washington County along Duck Creek between Macksburg and Lower Salem. Alf Landon was born at his grandparents' home in Pennsylvania and soon moved with his family to a larger home in Marietta. In the 1890s the young Landon attended the Third Street School where even four decades later Landon still remembered the discipline he received from principal Frank Wheeler.
He had a small backyard business that he ran selling pigeons caught in the school's attic. He also took care of the family chickens.
He and his family occasionally took a packet boat and picnicked on Blennerhassett Island.
In 1900 he entered Marietta Academy, a private high school that operated in town. It was here that he got his first taste of politics by helping to round up voters for a party caucus. The five-foot-six, 114-pound teenager soon started his short football career. In a game the following year, a Parkersburg High School player twice his weight tackled him and dislocated his shoulder. He was hit so hard that he woke up lying on a table in the gym. He would never play the game again.
The 13-year-old Alfred went to Parkersburg in 1900 to hear Theodore Roosevelt speak during a campaign swing down the Ohio River. Roosevelt was running with William McKinley for president. Decades later Landon would challenge Theodore Roosevelt's fifth cousin Franklin in the political race of his life.
In June of 1904 Alf Landon graduated from Marietta Academy, by all accounts he had been an average student through school. With the oil industry declining somewhat in Ohio, John Landon moved his family, including Alf, to Kansas to work for the Kansas Natural Gas Company a short time later.
He would thus attend college and begin his own career in the oil industry in Kansas, not Ohio. While his influence grew in the oil industry, so did it in politics. He became a state leader of the Republican State Central committee in 1928. In 1932 he became governor of the state. He was reelected in 1934, one of only two Republican governors to do so.
In June of 1936 his future once again was influenced by those in Ohio and specifically those gathered in Cleveland that were attending the Republican National Convention there. Among those there to pick the next Republican candidate was Charles Gates Dawes, former vice-president and former Marietta resident.
Earl Warren, and future Chief Justice Robert Taft, the son of the 27th president; automaker Henry Ford and famed pilot Charles Lindbergh were also rumored to have considered a run. By the time of the convention the field had narrowed to a few men, including William Borah of Idaho and Frank Knox of Illinois, who would be tapped at the convention to run as vice-president on the ticket.
Alf Landon was not in Cleveland for his nomination, choosing to stay in Topeka. The city was planning a big celebration when it became official. His daughter Peggy and father, John Landon, who had moved the family out of Marietta decades before, attended. She attentively watched, according to an article in The Marietta Times on June 12, 1936, as state-by-state yielded to the state of Kansas who officially nominated her father to be the candidate for president. At times she fanned her elderly grandfather who appeared faint in the hot hall.
After the nomination a "radio man" brought a microphone over and told her that her "daddy" was listening and that she should say something. "I am very happy. It looks confusing and very grand. I am very proud;" she told her father and the audience that was tuned in.
Landon would spend much of the remaining summer campaigning by rail; he did, however, manage several summer trips with his family.
When the election rolled around in November Roosevelt won it in one of the largest landslides in history. Roosevelt took more than 60 percent of the vote. Roosevelt had 523 electoral votes versus eight for Landon who only carried New Hampshire and Vermont.
Landon did manage to get the most votes in Washington County. Interest throughout the area was high. Despite heavy rain, people lined Putnam Street to hear the returns read from The Times office where they were broadcasted from a loudspeaker set up. The Times fielded hundreds of calls from people eager to know the results. Landon ended up with 615 more votes in Washington County than President Roosevelt. In a telegram to the president Landon said, "The nation has spoken. Every American will accept the verdict and work for the common cause of the good of our country." Landon's statement was true in 1936, when the nation faced an uncertain future. And it is just as true today.
Art Smith is online manager of The Times, he can be reached at asmith@mariettatimes.com