Plain Dick Russell

I have collected political items since I was a teenager.... off and on. Someone, and I’m sorry I don’t remember who it was, gave this one to me a few years ago. Somehow I put it in a drawer of my rolltop desk and thought no more of it till this morning. 

I have several political items related to Georgia’s famous Senator Richard B. “Dick” Russell. These four framed buttons are from his 1952 race for the Democratic nomination for president. 

They came from that year's Democratic National Convention along with this banner:

Somewhere I also have a wonderful little whistle from the convention emblazoned with "Whistle for Russell":

I knew that the mustachioed gent on the old button rediscovered this morning, just 7/8 inch in diameter, was from an earlier time. So I googled "Plain Dick Russell" and there he was --- in the December 1911 edition of Cosmopolitan Magazine!

He's the father of "our" Dick Russell and thirteen other children. He ran for governor of Georgia twice, losing both times. He succeeded at politics more often than he lost however. He was the youngest member of Georgia's house at one one time and was elected to judgeships several times. He was Chief Justice of Georgia's Supreme Court when he died in 1938. By that time his son and namesake had succeeded where Dad had stumbled and served a short term as the very young Governor of Georgia and had begun his long tenure as Georgia's US Senator.

Here is the Cosmo story, one of several under the heading "The Story-Tellers". I have pasted together the pieces to make it easier to read. To see it in context visit page 140 of this Cosmo:
https://books.google.com/books?id=2-ZIAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA140
...

Georgia has one of the strange museums right there in our state capitol building, and the most grotesquely fascinating exhibit to the thousands of kids who have visited there has been the two-headed calf's twin noggins on proud display. Do you suppose this is its origin? 

I found a small plate with the gilded senate emblem and Russell's signature at some antique or junk store many years ago.

And my late friend Audley Tucker took a photo of President Carter speaking at the younger Russell's funeral. I'll add that when I find it.

(Found it - 2023)

The new Governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter, spoke at the burial of Senator Richard Russell in Winder, Georgia, on the grounds of the Russell homeplace.