Eighty-six years ago today, in the little town of Avon, South Dakota, George S. McGovern was born.
The son of a Wesleyan Methodist minister, McGovern entered college at Dakota Wesleyan Univertisy in Mitchell, South Dakota in the fall of 1940, where he began a degree in history that was interrupted by his deployment as a B-24 bomber pilot to the European theater in 1943. He flew thirty-five missions, winning the Distinguished Flying Cross for his actions during a flight in which his plane was seriously damaged.
After the war, he returned to finish his degree, then briefly studied for the seminary at Northwestern University before returning to his first interest: history.
For a few years, he taught at Dakota Wesleyan, the school where he met his wife, Eleanor, during the war, but in 1953 he accepted the challenge of the state Democratic chairman to rebuild the party in solidly Republican South Dakota.
A short stint in the House and his political work led to President John F. Kennedy appointing him as the country's first director of the Food for Peace program. He ran for and won the 1962 Senate campaign in South Dakota while suffering from an attack of hepatitis picked up from a contaminated needle used to give him a yellow-fever injection. In the White House.
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