Harley Martin Kilgore | |
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United States Senator from West Virginia |
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In office January 3, 1941 – February 28, 1956 |
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Preceded by | Rush D. Holt Sr. |
Succeeded by | William R. Laird III |
Personal details | |
Born |
Brown, West Virginia |
January 11, 1893
Died | February 28, 1956 National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland |
(aged 63)
Political party | Democratic |
Profession | Lawyer, Judge, Military |
Harley Martin Kilgore (January 11, 1893 – February 28, 1956) was a United States Senator from West Virginia.
He was born on January 11, 1893 in Brown, West Virginia. He was born to Quimby Hugh Kilgore and Laura Jo Kilgore. His father worked as an oil driller and contractor. He attended the public schools and graduated from the law department of West Virginia University at Morgantown in 1914 and was admitted to the bar the same year.
He taught school in Hancock, West Virginia in 1914 and 1915, and organized the first high school in Raleigh County, West Virginia in the latter year. He was the school's first principal for a year, and commenced the practice of law in Beckley, West Virginia in 1916. During the First World War he served in the infantry from 1917 and was discharged as a captain in 1920; in 1921 he organized the West Virginia National Guard and retired as a colonel in 1953. He was married to Lois Elaine Lilly in Huntington, West Virginia, in 1921.
He was judge of the Raleigh County criminal court from 1933 to 1940, and was elected as a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in 1940, and won re-election twice. He was a member of the Senate from January 3, 1941 until his death in Bethesda Naval Hospital in 1956. Kilgore was a member of the Truman Committee, and from October 1942, he chaired the Subcommittee on War Mobilization of the Military Affairs Committee, otherwise known as the Kilgore Committee, that oversaw U.S. mobilization efforts for World War II. He also helped establish the National Science Foundation in 1950.