The Times - UK (2021-12-06)

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Dole as the Republican vice-presidential candidate campaigning with Ronald Reagan in 1976. Right,

as a US serviceman during the war. Below, with his second wife, Elizabeth, whom he married in 1975

until he met Hampar Kelikian, a pio-

neering Chicago neurosurgeon.

“Kelikian inspired me to focus on

what I had left and what I could do with

it, rather than complaining about what

had been lost,” Dole said. He also be-

lieved he could give Dole partial use of

his right arm. He operated for nothing

and the people of Russell raised $1,800

— a substantial sum in 1947 — to pay

the rest of his expenses.

Dole met Phyllis Holden, an occupa-

tional therapist, while recuperating at

the Percy Jones army medical centre in

Michigan. They married three months

later. He then studied law at the

University of Arizona and Washburn

University in Topeka, Kansas, with his

new wife taking notes and transcribing

essays for him.

By 1952 Dole was back in Russell,

running against another war veteran

for the post of county attorney. He won,

it was said, because he needed the job

more. He and his wife had a daughter,

Robin, who would later become a

Washington lobbyist, but he was

already becoming addicted to his work

and to politics.

In 1960 he ran for Congress, edging

past his opponent in the

all-important Republi-

can primary by dint of

nonstop campaigning,

a group of women from

Russell who called

themselves “Dolls for

Dole” and an ano-

nymous mailing that

accused his opponent

of being a drunk. Dole

denied any responsi-

bility.

In Washington

Dole became a

staunch, liberal-

bashing conserva-

tive. He made a

name for himself by

attacking President

Kennedy and ex-

posing a scandal in-

volving Billie Sol

Estes, a shady Tex-

an friend of Kennedy’s who

amassed a fortune by storing grain for

the government.

In 1968, the year Richard Nixon won

the presidency, Dole ran for the Senate,

winning the crucial Republican pri-

mary by relentlessly denouncing a tax

increase his opponent had imposed as

Kansas governor.

Dole revered Nixon, seeing him as an

outsider from a humble background

who had, like himself, succeeded

through sheer hard work. He became

the president’s hatchet man in the

Senate, lauding his achievements, ex-

coriating his opponents and generally

making himself so unpopular that a

fellow senator once remarked that “he

couldn’t peddle beer on a troopship”.

Nixon rewarded him by appointing

him chairman of the Republican

National Committee. Dole cam-

paigned so frenetically for Nixon

during the president’s 1972 re-election

campaign that his long-suffering

wife finally sued for divorce, and had

his driver remove his belongings

from their home. The Doles had

take Hill 913. It

was soon trapped

by withering ma-

chinegun fire

from a nearby

farmhouse. Dole

was cut down as he

led a charge on the

German position.

Bullets broke his spine, destroyed his

shoulder and all but severed his arm

from his body. A despairing comrade,

unable to do much else, gave him mor-

phine and drew an “M” on his forehead

with Dole’s blood to warn medics that

another shot of the drug would kill him.

Dole spent weeks in a field hospital,

paralysed from the neck down, hover-

ing between life and death. The war

over, he was shipped home in a body

cast and nearly died first of fever, and

later from a blood clot on his lung and

pneumonia. He was saved only by a

then experimental drug named strep-

tomycin.

Back in Russell, he had to learn to

walk again and to do the simplest tasks

such as eating, writing and dressing. He

rigged weights to pulleys to rebuild his

strength and pushed himself to the

limit, but progress was painfully slow

He spent weeks in a

field hospital hovering

between life and death

a c n a R t D n a o d b D s b t n a K p v E

anfriend

nedestroyedhi

Bob Dole came back from the Second
World War half-dead and largely para-
lysed, his once strapping but now ema-
ciated body encased in a plaster cast
after he had been lacerated by German
machinegun fire in Italy.
He spent the next three years fight-
ing first for his life, and then to recover
sufficiently to have a life. He succeeded
in dramatic fashion, though he never
regained the use of his right arm and
always clutched a pen in his right hand
to prevent it splaying outwards.
Driven by his unbreakable will, the
young man who grew up on the great
plains of Kansas during the Dust Bowl
years and the Depression went on to
become one of the giants of late 20th
century American politics.
He served eight years in the US
House of Representatives and 27 as a
senator. He also became, at the time,
the longest-serving Republican leader
in the US Senate’s history, brokering
deals and ushering bills through Con-
gress during his decade in that job.
Along the way he became President
Ford’s vice-presidential running mate
in 1976 and three times sought the pres-
idency for himself. He finally won the
Republican nomination in 1996 only to
lose to the Democratic incumbent,
President Clinton.
For all that, Dole was a hard man to
define; he had too many conflicting pol-
itical personas. He was the war hero
who on occasion deployed startlingly
ugly tactics to win elections. He was the
hatchet man and arch-conservative
who at other times embraced biparti-
sanship and programmes to help the
poor. He was a man known for his wit
and humour who could also shock with
his mean and snarling comments.
Unable to pursue the sports he loved
as a young man, Dole had few interests
outside politics, which became his en-
tire life. He was the ultimate Washing-
ton insider, a master of legislative pro-
cess who listed his recreations as
“working out on the treadmill” while
watching C-Span. In his speech con-
ceding the 1996 presidential election, as
he prepared to step off the political
treadmill, he remarked: “Tomorrow
will be the first time in my life I don’t
have anything to do.”
It did not quite turn out like that, of
course. Dole was too driven to enter
quiet retirement. As well as making
amusing commercials for products
that included Viagra and Dunkin’
Donuts, he wrote a memoir and
books on presidential humour and ap-
peared on diverse television
shows, served on presi-
dential commissions
and worked as a lawyer
and lobbyist for,
among other clients,
the government of
Taiwan.
As US politics be-
came ever more po-
larised, so Dole in
his mellow old age
came to be seen as a
symbol of a gentler,
more civil, less parti-
san era — though he did
endorse Donald Trump in
2016, and was the only
former Republican presi-
dential nominee to at-

tend the convention at which Trump

accepted the party’s nomination.

Having received the Presidential

Medal of Freedom from Clinton in

1997, Dole received America’s other top

civilian award, the Congressional Gold

Medal, from Trump in 2018 for his ser-

vice as a “soldier, legislator and states-

man”. Aged 94 and confined to a wheel-

chair, Dole rose — quite literally — to

the occasion one last time. Helped by

an aide and utterly determined,

he struggled to his feet and

stood for the national

anthem. After Trump lost the

election in 2020,

the still politically astute Dole noted

that he may never concede: “It’s a pretty

bitter pill for Trump, but it’s a fact he

lost. It’ll take him a while to accept that.”

Robert Joseph Dole was born in 1923

in Russell, Kansas, a small town that

prospered briefly after oil was found be-

neath the surrounding wheat fields, but

was savaged in the 1930s by the Depres-

sion and the great dust storms that

swept across the prairies, killing people,

crops and cattle.

Dole’s father, Doran, worked in the

town’s grain store and his mother, Bina,

sold Singer sewing machines door-to-

door, but they struggled to support

their family and Robert, the second of

four children but oldest son, worked as

a part-time soda-jerk in Dawson’s

drug store from the time he went to

Russell High School.

His sporting prowess gave him his

break. “Phog” Allen, a renowned bas-

ketball coach at Kansas Univers-

ity, spotted his talent and re-

cruited him. Dole paid his way

by clearing tables and deliver-

ing milk, but then the war in-

tervened. He enlisted in the

army, trained as an officer

and was shipped to Italy in late

1944.

He was assigned to the 85th

Mountain Regiment, Third Battal-

ion, which was fighting its way up the

spine of Italy in the face of ferocious

German resistance. On April 14,

1945, Dole’s company was ordered to

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Obituaries

Bob Dole

War veteran, Republican presidential candidate and giant of American politics who was considered the ultimate Washington insider

Eileen Ash

The world’s oldest Test

cricketer

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