John w mccormack

By Ray Hill

“I have no hesitancy in insisting that Government in an emergency do everything that can reasonably be done to relieve human suffering and distress.”

That was the philosophy of John William McCormack throughout his long political career and he lived by it.

John W. McCormack of Boston was an old-fashioned politico.  The first Catholic ever to be elected Speaker of the House, McCormack was a very religious man and a kindly one.  In fact, John McCormack never seemed to hold any animosity toward any political foe, much less a grudge.  McCormack watched helplessly when his favorite nephew, Edward, waged an uphill battle for a seat in the United States Senate against a thirty-year old newcomer, Edward Moore Kennedy.  The younger McCormack, who had been Attorney General of Massachusetts, had growled d

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