Charles H. Percy

Charles Harting Percy (September 27, 1919 – September 17, 2011), also known as Chuck Percy, was an American businessman and politician.

In the mid-1930s, his pluck brought him to the attention of his Sunday school teacher, Joseph McNabb, the president of Bell & Howell, then a small camera company.

Percy completed high school at New Trier High School.

He entered the University of Chicago on a half tuition scholarship, and worked his way through college with several part-time jobs.

Percy started at Bell & Howell in 1938 as an apprentice and sales trainee while he was still in college.

In 1939 he worked at Crowell Collier.

While continuing to manufacture movie cameras and movie and sound projectors for military, commercial, and home use, in the late 1940s the company diversified into the production of microfilm.

It later entered the rapidly expanding markets of information services as well.

He completed his degree in economics in 1941, and was a member of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity.

He returned to Bell & Howell in 1941 to work full-time after graduating from the University of Chicago.

Astute at business, within a year he was appointed a director of the company.

Percy served three years in the United States Navy during World War II and returned to the company in 1945.

He was president of the Bell & Howell Corporation from 1949 to 1964, and served as a Republican U.S. senator from Illinois from 1967 until 1985, following a defeat to Paul Simon.

In 1949, the Jaycees named Percy one of the "Outstanding Young Men in America", along with Gerald R. Ford Jr., of Michigan, future U.S. president, and John Ben Shepperd, future Texas attorney general.

After Joseph McNabb died in 1949, Percy was made the president of Bell & Howell.

He was instrumental in leading the company during a period of financial success and growth.

During his leadership, Percy expanded Bell & Howell, raising revenues 32-fold and the number of employees 12-fold, and listing the company on the New York Stock Exchange.

In the late 1950s, Percy decided to enter politics.

With the encouragement of then U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Percy helped to write Decisions for a Better America, which proposed a set of long-range goals for the Republican Party.

He belonged to the moderate and liberal wing of the Republican party, led by Eisenhower during his presidency and later closely identified with New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller.

In 1958, Percy served on the Rockefeller Foundation's Special Study Fund, essentially working as an informal advisor to Rockefeller's campaign for Governor of New York.

Percy first entered electoral politics with a run for governor of Illinois in 1964, which he narrowly lost to Democratic incumbent Otto Kerner.

During his gubernatorial campaign, Percy reluctantly endorsed conservative Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater, his future Senate colleague.

Goldwater fared poorly throughout the country, although he did marginally better in Illinois than in the nation at large.

In 1966, Percy ran for U.S. senator from Illinois.

His 21-year-old daughter Valerie was murdered at the family home on the morning of September 18, late in the campaign.

Her death was thought to have been caused by an intruder, but the crime was never solved despite a lengthy investigation.

Percy and his opponent both suspended campaigning for a couple of weeks following Valerie's death.

He upset Democratic Senator Paul Douglas (a former professor of Percy's at the University of Chicago) with 56 percent of the vote.

After Percy appeared on the television show Face The Nation on January 15, 1967, with the other newly elected Republican Senators, the then President Lyndon Johnson noted privately that he thought Percy would make a fine president if the opportunity should ever arise.

On December 12, 1967, Senator Percy met with South Vietnamese President Thieu and assured him that "no responsible people in either the Democratic or the Republican Party favored US withdrawal from South Vietnam."

He was mentioned as a Republican presidential hopeful from 1968 through 1988.

During his Senate career, Percy concentrated on business and foreign relations.

Charles Harting Percy was born in Pensacola, the seat of Escambia County in far northwestern Florida, the son of Edward H. Percy and the former Elizabeth Harting.

His father, an Alabama native descended from illustrious colonial-era Mississippians and Virginians, was at various times an automobile salesman and bank cashier.

His Illinois-born mother was a concert violinist.

Edward was a son of Charles Brown Percy and Helen Leila Herndon of the powerful Herndon family of Virginia.

Elizabeth Harting was a daughter of Phineas Fredrick Harting and Belle Aschenbach.

The family moved to Chicago when Percy was an infant.

As a child, he had entrepreneurial energy and held jobs while attending school.