Pharmacist and leading politician

Next Friday, 27 May 2011, marks the centenary of the birth of Hubert Humphrey, whose status as a famous pharmacist has already been briefly mentioned in this column by “Prospector”.

Humphrey was born the son of a pharmacist in Wallace, South Dakota, and embarked upon a degree in political science at the University of Minnesota in 1932. But the economic downturn meant that his father’s pharmacy began to struggle. He decided to relocate to the larger town of Huron, and Hubert abandoned his studies to help build up the new business. He obtained a pharmacist’s licence from the Capitol College of Pharmacy in Denver, completing the two-year course in just six months.

However, Hubert’s heart lay in politics, and when the business became established, he resumed his political studies, funding them by part-time work as a pharmacist and graduating in 1939. He was elected as a Democrat to the US senate in 1948, and served as vice-president to Lyndon B. Johnson from 1965 to 1969.

As a senator, Humphrey was an outspoken, prominent figure in the campaign for social welfare and civil rights, but as Johnson’s vice-president he found that many of his liberal colleagues and friends felt let down by his failure to criticise the administration’s support for the Vietnam War. It was later revealed that Johnson had threatened to prevent Humphrey’s nomination as Democratic candidate for the 1968 election if he spoke against the war.

In the event, Humphrey did win the nomination but suffered several setbacks during his unsuccessful campaign against Richard Nixon . His slogan “The politics of joy” seemed a little off-key in a year that saw violent clashes over Vietnam and the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King.

Bizarrely, considering his earlier rejection of the profession, Humphrey’s promotional team decked out his campaign headquarters in the style of an old-fashioned pharmacy.

Hubert Humphrey died of cancer on 13 January 1978.