Sid McMath

Sidney Sanders McMath (June 14, 1912 – October 4, 2003) was a U.S. marine, attorney and the 34th governor of Arkansas from 1949 to 1953.

In defiance of his state's political establishment, he championed rapid rural electrification, massive highway and school construction, the building of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, strict bank and utility regulation, repeal of the poll tax, open and honest elections and broad expansion of opportunity for black citizens in the decade following World War II.

After years of wrangling horses and bad-luck wildcatting in the Southwest Arkansas oil fields, Hal McMath moved his family by wagon to Hot Springs in June 1922.

There, he sold the last of his horses and took a job as a barber.

Nettie went to work as a manicurist and for the Malco movie theater as a ticket vendor.

Sid and his sister, Edyth, attended Hot Springs public schools, where the boy excelled in boxing and drama and became an Eagle Scout while shining shoes and hawking newspapers to supplement the family's meager income.

He was elected president of his class each of his high school years, the last of which he won the state Golden Gloves welterweight boxing title.

He attended Henderson State College and the University of Arkansas, where he was elected president of the student body.

He was a member of the Arkansas Pershing Rifles military fraternal organization, Blue Key, and Sigma Alpha Epsilon.

He graduated from the university's School of Law in 1936.

McMath received a reserve ROTC commission as a second lieutenant in the Marines upon graduation from college.

A former sheriff who attempted to have the state's anti-gambling laws enforced was murdered in 1937; no one was ever charged with the killing.

McMath headed a "GI Ticket", which, except for McMath himself, was defeated in the Democratic primary election.

During World War II he served with the Marines after voluntarily returning to active duty in 1940.

Assigned to train officer candidates at Quantico, Virginia, he was promoted to captain, then to major, and in 1942 he was ordered to American Samoa in command of the combined forces jungle warfare school.

From late 1942 to early 1944, he led the 3rd Marine Regiment in battle as operations officer and acting CO in the Pacific Theatre, including New Georgia, Vella Lavella, Guadalcanal and Bougainville, during which he directed the Battle of Piva Forks, the pivotal action, single-handedly rallying troops pinned down by enemy mortar and machine-gun fire.

He received a battlefield promotion to lieutenant colonel and was awarded the Silver Star and Legion of Merit.

The citation for the former, personally signed by Admiral W.F. "Bull" Halsey, lauded McMath's "extraordinary heroism ... and disregard for his own safety above and beyond the call of duty [which] was an inspiration to the officers and men who observed him."

Shortly afterward, McMath was stricken with malaria and filariasis and hospitalized for several months in New Zealand and San Diego.

He then served in the Marine Corps headquarters in Washington, D.C. planning an amphibious invasion of the Japanese home islands.

Lt. Col. McMath was discharged from active duty in December 1945.

In early 1946, McMath and other veterans returning from World War II banded together to fight corruption in the Hot Springs city government, which was dominated by illegal gambling interests.

Hot Springs at the time was a national gambling mecca frequented by organized crime figures from Chicago, New York City, and other metropolitan areas.

Casinos flourished, and hotels advertised the availability of prostitutes.

Mobsters maintained political control by purchasing and holding hundreds of poll tax receipts, often in the names of deceased or fictitious persons, which would be used to cast multiple votes in different precincts.

Law enforcement officers were on the payroll of the local "organization" headed by longstanding Mayor Leo McLaughlin.

However, the others resigned from the party and ran again as independents in the 1946 general election after McMath persuaded a federal judge to toss out the fraudulent poll tax receipts.

McMath remained loyal to President Harry S. Truman during the "Dixiecrat" rebellion of 1948, campaigning throughout the South for Truman's re-election.

As a former governor, McMath led the opposition to segregationist Governor Orval Faubus following the 1957 Little Rock school crisis.

He later became one of the nation's foremost trial lawyers, representing thousands of injured persons in precedent-setting cases and mentoring several generations of young attorneys.

At the time of his death, he was the earliest-serving former governor.

Sidney Sanders McMath was born in a dog-trot log cabin on the old McMath home place near Magnolia, Columbia County, Arkansas, the son of Hal Pierce and Nettie Belle Sanders McMath.

His paternal grandfather, Columbia County Sheriff Sidney Smith McMath, grand nephew of his martyred Goliad namesake, had himself been killed in the line of duty the previous year, leaving a pensionless widow and eight children, Hal being the eldest.

He held the office of National President of the 3d Marine Division Association 1960–61.

Following his promotion to brigadier general in June 1963, with date of rank from July 1962, he performed active service as assistant commanding general, Marine Corps Base, Camp Pendleton, California, in the summer of 1963; assistant commanding general, Landing Force Training Unit, Pacific, at Coronado, California, in the summer of 1964; assistant division commander, 2nd Marine Division, FMF, at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, in the summer of 1965; president, Marine Corps Reserve Policy Board, USMC, in the summer of 1966, and in addition served at Fleet Marine Force, Pacific, including the 3rd Marine Amphibious Force in Vietnam.

He resumed his activity with the Marine Corps Reserve following his tenure as governor and commanded VTU 8–14 in Little Rock until 1964.

He was promoted to major general on November 7, 1966.

In 1967, the general served as assistant deputy commander, Fleet Marine Force, Atlantic, during the summer training period.

In 1967, he helped found the Marine Corps JROTC at Catholic High School for Boys in Little Rock, Arkansas, which became one of the top JROTC units in the nation.

He served a second brief Reserve tour in Vietnam, with the 3rd Marine Division, in 1969.