The Gentleman From Michigan: Charles E. Potter
History is full of obscure figures, but it is also like a dusty old closet that is full of interesting things once opened and examined. Charles Potter looked like a small-town accountant with his horn-rimmed glasses, thinning hair, and neat appearance. That same modest appearance masked a steely determination. Charlie Potter is remembered today as a Republican senator who was highly skeptical of Joe McCarthy. After leaving the Senate, Potter wrote a best-selling book, “Days of Shame,” about his experience as a senator and the McCarthy hearings and the censure of the Wisconsin lawmaker.
Charlie Potter had been wounded three times during the Second World War and rose from buck private to major. It really isn’t sufficient to say that Potter was “wounded” as he lost both of his legs due to a land mine. Potter was awarded the Silver Star (twice), the Purple Heart, and France’s Croix de Guerre. Charlie Potter was able to walk, albeit slowly, through the use of artificial limbs and two canes.
It was Senator Charles Potter who surprised friend and foe when he produced a mimeographed statement which Joe McCarthy “gawked at” “with astonishment.” Potter’s statement was big news in Washington, D.C., with the Michigan senator stating, “I believe a criminal case against some of the principals might be developed if the case were taken to a grand jury room where the testimony would have to be repeated without others being present.” Potter ticked off a list of corrections and a host of things he found wrong with the hearings orchestrated by McCarthy and his staff. “The testimony of witnesses of both sides was saturated with statements which were not truthful … I believe there may have been subornation of perjury.” As to McCarthy aide Roy Cohn, who later became a notorious attorney, Potter said, “I shall propose dismissal of those employees who have played top roles on both sides.” Potter stated his firm belief, “The staff of the subcommittee will have to be overhauled.”
Charlie Potter was a reasonable man during a time when Washington, D.C., was seized by panic and fear. Potter’s statement also seemed to shift the balance of power on McCarthy’s subcommittee during the Army-McCarthy hearings. It was truly the beginning of the end for Joe McCarthy.
It is part of American history that at the end of a war, the Congress is frequently populated by veterans of the last war. With the heroes of the Second World War having come home, a goodly number of them campaigned for office. Potter was working as a representative for the vocational rehabilitation department of the Retraining & Reemployment Administration, which was a division of the U.S. Department of Labor, helping those veterans like himself or had been wounded to readjust and reenter the work force. When Congressman Fred Bradley died, Charles Potter became a candidate in the special election and won the seat, taking his place as a member of the House of Representatives on August 26, 1947.
Reelected in 1948 and 1950, Potter became a candidate for the United States Senate seat once held by Arthur Vandenberg, who had died in 1951. Governor G. Mennen Williams had appointed Blair Moody, a journalist, to fill the senatorial vacancy. Potter beat Moody and took his seat on November 5, 1952.
Potter went to the U.S. Senate in the same election that saw Dwight D. Eisenhower take back the White House after twenty long years of Democratic rule. As a senator, Charles E. Potter was a supporter of the Eisenhower Administration and was considered a champion of veterans. As might be expected for a senator from Michigan, Charlie Potter was also considered an advocate for the automobile industry. Potter also headlined a flashy investigation into alleged Communist activities in the movie industry and labor organizations, which earned the senator the avowed enmity of labor. Potter drew the most attention during his six years in the United States Senate as an opponent of Joe McCarthy. Charlie Potter was the first member of the Senate to question improprieties by McCarthy’s staff members.
G. Mennen Williams, an heir to the once hugely popular Mennen products (speed stick deodorants, skin bracer, etc.), was known for his ever-present green and white polka-dotted bowtie. Better known as “Soapy,” Williams was the perennial governor of Michigan, winning every two years from 1948 through 1958 and finally leaving office on January 1, 1961. Any chief executive from a populous state who was enduringly popular with his people is a natural presidential possibility and Soapy Williams began traveling around the country to give himself some exposure. The lieutenant governor of Michigan was Philip Hart, who managed the store while Soapy Williams put his toe in the roiling presidential waters. As Williams prepared to run for reelection in 1958, Hart announced he was running for the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate against Senator Charles E. Potter. Hart would have the full backing of both the Williams Administration and organized labor.
Like Potter, Phil Hart was a wounded veteran, having been injured in mortar fire on Utah Beach during the fighting on D-Day. Hart had married mighty well to Jane Briggs, the daughter of Walter Owen Briggs, an enormously wealthy businessman from auto manufacturing and who also owned the Detroit Tigers. Jane Hart owned her own airplane and flew her husband from one campaign stop to another. Together, the couple were parents to eight very photogenic children and Mrs. Hart had the capacity to self-fund her husband’s campaign. Phil Hart was a very real threat to Charlie Potter’s continued tenure in the U.S. Senate.
Even more ominous was that the political complexion of the Wolverine State was changing. Senator Homer Ferguson had been defeated in 1954 in an upset and Potter was the lone Republican still holding statewide office in Michigan. The campaign between Senator Charles Potter and Philip Hart was hard fought, but 1958 was a banner year for Democrats nationally and equally so in Michigan. Potter lost by 170,000 votes and ran as good a race as was possible at the time for any Republican.
A week after his defeat, Senator Charles Potter held an informal press conference in his Washington, D.C., office. “I am not bitter about the loss,” Potter told the gathered newsmen. “I have no regrets. My political fortunes have been good.” As to his future plans, Potter replied, “I’m in no hurry. Many jobs have been brought up that I am exploring, both in Government and private industry.”
There were the usual rumors surrounding Potter and a pending appointment from the Eisenhower Administration. It had been Charlie Potter who had led a group of GOP senators in urging Ike to fire his highly prized and much-disliked chief of staff, Sherman Adams. Adams had gotten entangled in a minor scandal having taken a vicuna coat from controversial financier Bernard Goldfine. There were those who believed President Eisenhower had done little to help Potter in his reelection bid in 1958 because of the Adams affair.
Reports indicated Potter had turned down a position in the Commerce Department, as well as an offer from the Eisenhower Administration to head the Social Security office. The former senator was apparently at least tempted by one offer that supposedly came from the Eisenhower Administration, making Potter the chairman of the U.S.-Canadian International Joint Commission, which carried a salary of $20,000 annually (roughly $211,00 today). Reportedly, just before the president was to make the announcement of Potter’s appointment, the former senator from Michigan called the White House to turn it down. Charlie Potter had accepted a third position as the executive director of the Committee of American Tanker Owners, Inc., which he said would pay him “in excess” of the handsome $20,000 salary.
While Potter was not bitter about his defeat, privately, friends acknowledged it had deeply hurt the former senator. One reporter for the Lansing State Journal wrote, “Potter disappeared almost entirely from public view” following his election loss. “With his wife, Lorraine, he stayed shut up much of the time in their Arlington Towers apartment.”
A few months after his defeat, Potter and his wife were still living in their apartment in Arlington, Virginia. The former senator’s father-in-law told a newsman, “Charlie’s looking up a job. He’s had a couple of offers. He’s looking around and I think he’s getting lined up. I hope he finds something soon.”
One rumor swirling around the former senator involved him becoming the top lobbyist for the television networks. A month later came the announcement that Potter was the new president of the World Seaway Shipping Agency, as well as a partner in Jensen Enterprises, a corporation which was buying land to rent for various purposes. The Seaway Shipping Agency was an affiliate of the Ocean Shipping & Trading Corporation, which owned a vast fleet of cargo ships that traveled the globe and the St. Lawrence seaway. The Seaway Shipping Agency kept offices in both New York City and Detroit.
Soon, Charlie Potter was jetting back and forth between Washington, D.C., New York City, and Detroit, pursuing his business. Only 42 years old when he left the Senate, Charlie Potter found there was life after Congress. Potter established himself as a highly successful consultant and lobbyist. Potter became much more influential as a lobbyist than he ever had been as a member of the United States Senate.
Potter readily acknowledged he still “loved” politics and confessed he might still run for office in the future. With another senatorial election coming up in Michigan in 1960, reporters queried the former senator if he would seek the GOP nomination to challenge his former colleague, Pat McNamara. “You can say present indications are that I won’t be a candidate. As for the future – well, I’m not ruling anything out. I hope I have a good many years ahead of me.”
Potter once said he practically lived on an airplane and described himself as one of the airlines’ steadiest customers. Apparently, his constant shuffling between points took its toll on his marriage and the former senator filed for divorce from his wife, Lorraine, in December 1959. The divorce suit raised some eyebrows because the judge agreed to a request made by Potter to suppress it, meaning the divorce document was not public record. Enterprising reporters telephoned Lorraine Potter, who tersely refused to make any comment. Naturally, the suppression of a former senator’s divorce case caused more speculation and raised curiosity even higher. Lorraine Potter, in her own divorce suit, claimed she was neglected and charged the former senator stayed away from home for long periods of time without telling her where he had been. Potter withdrew his divorce complaint minutes before the hearing.
The speculation ended with the announcement the following year that the former senator was marrying Betty Bryant Wismer, a divorcee with two teenaged children. Mrs. Wismer was a niece of the late automobile titan Henry Ford and had been the campaign manager for Potter’s 1958 senatorial campaign in Washtenaw County. Betty Wismer lived on an estate in Ypsilanti given to her by Henry Ford when she had married her first husband in 1940. The couple intended to delay a European honeymoon to wait for Wismer’s daughter, Wendy, to finish out the year at Roosevelt High School in Ypsilanti. The couple remained together until Potter’s death.
Potter also remained active behind the scenes in Republican politics and his consulting business flourished with clients across the globe. Some of Potter’s clients included huge corporations like Uniroyal and Rockwell International. Charles Potter was admitted to Walter Reed Hospital, where he died of an apparent heart attack on November 23, 1979, at age 63.
As befitting an American hero who lost both his legs fighting for his country at the Battle of the Bulge, Charles E. Potter was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery.
© 2025 Ray Hill
