Charles H. Percy, 91, American politician, Senator from Illinois (1967–1985), died from Alzheimer's disease at 91.

Charles Harting Percy was an American businessman and politician. He was president of the Bell & Howell Corporation from 1949 to 1964. In 1966, he was elected to the United States Senate from Illinois as a Republican; he served for almost twenty years, until 1985, after he was defeated by Paul Simon. During his Senate career, he concentrated on business and foreign relations.

(September 27, 1919 – September 17, 2011)

Early life and education

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 Elisabeth Harting.^[4] His father, an Alabama native descended from 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, from the powerful Herndon family of Virginia.^[5][6] Elizabeth Harting was a daughter of Phineas Fredrick Harting and Belle Aschenbach.^[7]
The family moved to Chicago when Percy was an infant. As a child, he was notable for his entrepreneurial energy, and often held several jobs while attending school. 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. He completed his degree in economics in 1941.^[1][4]

Career

Percy started at Bell & Howell in 1938 as an apprentice and sales trainee. In 1939 he worked at Crowell Collier. He went to work full time for Bell & Howell in 1941, after college. 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.^[3]
After Joseph McNabb died in 1949, Percy was made the president of Bell & Howell. 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.)
During his leadership of Bell & Howell, Percy led the company through years of expansion, with a 32-fold increase in company sales, a 12-fold increase in employees, and taking the company public, with a listing for stock sales on the New York Stock Exchange. While continuing to make a variety of movie cameras for military, commercial and home use; and movie and sound projectors, in the late 1940s, the company branched into the production of microfilm. Later it entered the information services markets as well.

Political career

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 was considered to be a liberal Republican, among a group from the Northeast and Midwest.
Percy first entered electoral politics with a run for governor in 1964, which he narrowly lost to Democratic incumbent Otto Kerner. During his gubernatorial campaign, Percy reluctantly endorsed Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater, his future Senate colleague, who fared poorly in Illinois.

U.S. Senate

In 1966, Percy ran for senator from Illinois; he upset the Democratic senator Paul Douglas (a former professor of Percy's at the University of Chicago) with 56 percent of the vote. During that campaign, Percy's 21-year-old daughter Valerie was murdered at the family home under mysterious circumstances, apparently by an intruder. He suspended the campaign for two weeks. Valerie Percy's murder has never been solved, despite a long investigation.^[2] Following the murder, CBS postponed, and eventually canceled, its planned airing of the Alfred Hitchcock film Psycho.
In 1967, Senator Percy introduced a bill to establish a program to stimulate production of low-cost housing. Percy's proposal was the first of its kind to provide home ownership to low-income families, and it received strong support from Republicans in both the House and the Senate. When asked why he selected housing for his first major legislative proposal, Percy said: "Of all the problems I ran across during three years of campaigning, first for the governorship and then for the Senate, the most appalling in their consequences for the future seemed to be the problems of the declining areas of the city and countryside, the inadequacy of housing."
In 1978, as Percy was completing his second term, he appeared invincible.^[8] Percy was considered so strong that the Democratic party was unable to persuade any serious candidates to challenge him.^[9] Emerging from the Democratic primary was the dark horse candidate, Alex Seith, who had never before sought elected office but had served as an appointee on the Cook County Zoning Board of Appeals for twelve years, nine as chairman.
But at that time, Percy's reputation as a Rockefeller Republican, contrasted with Seith's ostensible hard-line foreign policy positions, combined to make Percy suddenly vulnerable in the weeks before the election. Sensing his improbable loss, Percy went on television days before the polling and, with tear-filled eyes, pleaded with Illinois voters to give him another chance. He said, "I got your message and you're right . . . I'm sure that I've made my share of mistakes, but your priorities are mine."^[10] He won re-election by a 54% to 46% margin.
Percy served in the Senate until the end of his third term in January 1985. He had been narrowly defeated for re-election in November 1984 by the liberal Congressman Paul Simon. After Percy's defeat, no Republican would win a senatorial race in Illinois until Peter Fitzgerald in 1998.
In 2006, in writing about the influence of political lobbies on the U.S. relationship with Israel, political theorists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt wrote that they believed Percy's loss resulted from the campaign waged against him by the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).^[11] The lobbying group controlled substantial monies and helped lawmakers who they believed supported the security of Israel. Earlier that year, Percy had addressed himself, along with the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Dante Fascell, to the cause of Karl Linnas, a concentration camp commander who was to be deported back to Estonia, having lied in the papers he used to enter the United States. Linnas had ordered, and participated in, the murders of Jews and other prisoners.^[12] Percy's view, shared by Fascell and by Representative Donald L. Ritter of Pennsylvania and of the Helsinki Commission was that Linnas should be deported but not to the Soviet Union.
While in the Senate, Percy was active in the areas of business and international affairs. Although he explored the possibility of running for President in 1968 and 1976, he did not run either time. During the early 1970s, he clashed with the policies of President Nixon and criticized the U.S. conduct of the Vietnam War.
In 1977, Percy and Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey - responding to the 1973 OPEC oil embargo and high energy prices in general - created the Alliance to Save Energy^[13] to encourage a national commitment to energy efficiency. Sen. Percy was the founding chairman of the organization.^[14]
Perhaps Percy's most important act, and his longest-lasting legacy, was ending the practice of nominating federal judges from the Chicago political machine. He implemented a system of consultation with, and advice from, several groups, including the professional bar association, which was considered novel at the time.^[15] One of his nominees, John Paul Stevens, was selected by Gerald Ford as a justice of the United States Supreme Court.^[15]

Literary opinions

Percy said of the Autobiography of Malcolm X, that "Every white person should read it."^[16]

Marriage and family

Percy was a Christian Scientist.^[4] During World War II, Percy married Jeanne Dickerson. They had twin daughters, Valerie and Sharon (born 1944), and a son Roger (born 1947). Jeanne died in 1947, of a violent reaction to drugs after a seemingly simple and successful operation. In 1950, Percy married Loraine Guyer. Their children were Gail (born 1953) and Mark (born 1955).
About a year after the murder of her twin sister Valerie, in 1966, Sharon Percy married John D. Rockefeller IV,^[4] who was later elected to two terms (1977-1985) as the Democratic Governor of West Virginia and has been a United States Senator from that state since 1985.
He remained active after leaving political office, but suffered from Alzheimer's disease in his later years.^[17]
He died on September 17, 2011 at the Washington Home and Community Hospice in Washington, D.C..^[4][18]

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