Vance Hartke

Vance Hartke
United States Senator from Indiana
In office January 3, 1959 – January 3, 1977
Preceded by	William E. Jenner
Succeeded by	Dick Lugar
Personal details
Born	Rupert Vance Hartke May 31, 1919(1919-05-31) Pike County, Indiana
Died	July 27, 2003(2003-07-27) (aged 84) Falls Church, Virginia
Resting place	Arlington National Cemetery Arlington, Virginia
Nationality	American
Political party	Democratic
Spouse(s)	Martha Hartke
Children	Sandra Hartke Jan Hartke Wayne Hartke Keith Hartke Paul Hartke Anita Hartke Nadine Hartke
Alma mater	Evansville University Indiana University School of Law - Bloomington
Profession	Attorney
Religion	Lutheran
Military service
Service/branch	United States Navy United States Coast Guard
Rank	Lieutenant

Rupert Vance Hartke (May 31, 1919 – July 27, 2003) was a Democratic United States Senator from Indiana from 1959 until 1977.

Early life, education, military service

Born in Stendal, Pike County, Indiana, on May 31, 1919, Hartke attended public schools in Stendal. He graduated from Evansville College (now the University of Evansville) in 1940, and from 1942 until 1946 Hartke served in the United States Navy and United States Coast Guard, rising from Seaman to Lieutenant. Hartke graduated from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law in 1948. His grandfather also died the day he graduated. Therefore, he had to miss his graduation.

Legal and political career

After joining the Indiana State Bar in 1948, Hartke began practicing law in Evansville. He also worked as deputy prosecuting attorney of Vanderburgh County (1950–1951) and mayor of Evansville (1956–1958) and integrated the city swimming pools before being elected to the United States Senate in 1958 and reelected in 1964 and 1970 (1959–1977).

Senate service and later life

In the Senate, Hartke was best known for his opposition to the Vietnam War and his chairmanship of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. Hartke had a fallout with President Lyndon Johnson when he became one of the first opponents of the Vietnam War.

Hartke was elected to the Senate in 1958 at age 39 as a hard-working, liberal Democrat with a strong relationship with Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson. In his first term, Hartke was a member of the Finance and Commerce committees. During his first term, Hartke lobbied for programs like Medicare and Medicaid, and supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Hartke was reelected in 1964, becoming only the third Indiana Democrat to be popularly elected to a second term in the Senate. He helped create student loan programs and new veterans benefits during his second term. He ordered automakers to equip cars with seat belts. He helped to establish Amtrak as chairman of the Subcommittee on Surface Transportation. Hartke used his chairmanship of Commerce Transportation Subcommittee to make automakers equip cars with seat belts and other safety equipment. He also was instrumental in creating the International Executive Service Corps, an organization, modeled after the Peace Corps that sent retired U.S. businessmen to poor countries to help turn small businesses into large ones.

Hartke was credited with important roles in the passage of measures that created or supported student loan programs, veterans' benefits and the Head Start Program. He also developed an organization modeled on the Peace Corps that helped small overseas businesses. Senator Hartke introduced a bill to create the George Washington Peace Academy and a Department of Peace. The concept became known as the first cornerstone for the campaign that led to the creation of the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Hartke was praised for winning passage of a measure making kidney dialysis more widely available. A statement entered into the Congressional Record in honor of his 80th birthday credited the measure with saving 500,000 lives.

Hartke's opposition to the Vietnam War was not popular in Indiana. However, in 1970, after a tight race against Republican Congressman Richard L. Roudebush and a ballot recount, Hartke won a third term by 4,200 votes. In 1972, Hartke was also an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 1972 against fellow Senators Edmund Muskie and George McGovern. Hartke was defeated for reelection in 1976 by Indianapolis Mayor Richard Lugar in a landslide; he only carried one county, Lake County.

In 1994, Hartke was indicted "on misdemeanor charges of buying lunch for election workers, dancing, playing the piano and handing out souvenirs at polling places while working for a casino company during a riverboat casino referendum last November." http://www.nytimes.com/1994/09/09/us/ex-senator-indicted-in-polling-place-incidents.html

Hartke wrote two books — The American Crisis in Vietnam and You and Your Senator.

Hartke died in Falls Church, Virginia on July 27, 2003, at age 84, and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Hartke left behind his wife, Martha, and his seven children: Sandra, Jan, Wayne, Keith, Paul, Anita, and Nadine as well as thirteen grandchildren: Angela, Vance, Jason, Jessica, Travis, Melody, Chelsea, Hanna, Ryan, Tyler, Dean, Zachary, and Wyatt, and two great grand children: Colby and Jackson.

Hartke's daughter, Anita Hartke, was the 2008 Democratic candidate for the United States House of Representatives from the 7th congressional district of Virginia. She lost to the Republican incumbent, Eric Cantor.

John F. Kennedy Profiles in Courage Posthumous Award by JFK Club of Vanderburgh County

In 2009 the JFK Club of Vanderburgh County awarded the John F. Kennedy Profiles in Courage Posthumous Award to Senator Vance Hartke. To carry forward the legacy and principals of President John F. Kennedy by supporting legislation and government officials or candidates that promote social justice and equality, in order to build a better community and society for all.

'Indiana Political Heroes' Author Geoff Paddock

Perhaps no other conflict since the Civil War divided the country more than the Vietnam War. As the conflict escalated in the mid 1960's, Americans became disenchanted about the huge sacrifice the country was making in a land so far away. The war became the focal point of foreign policy debate, and it caused many members of Congress to first side with President Lyndon Johnson in supporting a stand for democracy in Indochina, and then to later oppose him as casualties skyrocketed and a strategy for winning seemed elusive.

One of the first members of Congress to seriously question the veracity of America's involvement in the war was U.S. Senator Vance Hartke of Indiana. A fast talking, hard hitting former prosecutor and Evansville mayor, Hartke's participation on the national stage in the discussion of how far the United States should go to protect foreign nations from the clutch of Communism when the lives of American soldiers were at stake, alienated him from his good friend and former Senate colleague Johnson.

Hartke was born in tiny Stendal, Indiana, a coal mining region in southern Pike County on May 31, 1919. He graduated from the University of Evansville, served in the U.S. Coast Guard and the navy during World War II, and then received a law degree from Indiana University in 1948. Before his service in the war, he married Martha Tiernan in 1943, and they had seven children. The Hartke family moved to nearby Evansville after Vance completed law school, and he began a career in law and politics.

Hartke served as deputy prosecuting attorney in Evansville and Vanderburgh County before being elected mayor in 1955. In his first year in office, he integrated the city's swimming pool, inspiring hateful telephone calls to the family home. He served only three years before running for an open seat for the U.S. Senate in a Democratic friendly year of 1958. It was said he became the first genuine retail politician in Indiana, barnstorming around the state at all hours of the day and night to meet voters at front doors, factory gates, and shopping centers. As Wayne Waymire, a former aid, later described him, his boss was a nonstop campaigner who outworked everybody. “We would pick him up in Evansville in the morning; he would make eight to ten stops before noon and spend the night in the South Bend,” Waymire recalled.

It proved to be a pace other successful Indian politicians later followed. “He changed the face of Indiana politics,” said former U.S. Representative Lee Hamilton in a 2003 interview with the Indianapolis Star. That election saw Hartke draw his largest electoral plurality of his career, defeating Governor Harold Handley 56 percent to 44 percent in the midterm elections. Taking his seat in the Senate in Jauary 1959, Hartke displayed a bubbly personality and keen intellect that earned him close friendships with his colleagues, John Kennedy of Massachusetts, Johnson of Texas, Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, and Estes Kefauver of Tennessee. Majority Leader Johnson gave Hartke choice committee assignments on the powerful Finance and Commerce committees. He and Hartke became great friends in the Senate, and Hartke strongly backed Johnson's Great Society agenda upon his succession to the presidency following Kennedy's assassination.

For eighteen years as a senator and fourteen of them as the senior senator from Indiana, Hartke was knownfor his tenaciousness and his ability to juggle many issues at a time. He was used to working long days and weekends for his constituents, and in his three terms Indiana bore the fruit of many Hartke initiatives, especially in promoting economic policy and federal funding for education. As a member of the Senate Finance Committee, he helped initiate the federal student-loan program. Hartke also brought federal money to Indiana for such projects as drug research, agriculture production, flood control, housing, transportation, and urban revitalization. On a national level, Hartke could be counted on as an ally to the Kennedy and Johnson administrations on such issues as civil rights, Medicare, Medicaid, the Peace Corps, clean air and water, and promoting foreign policy initiatives through negotiations. He was an active member of the Committee on Aging and in1971 was appointed chairman of the Veteran's Affairs committee.

Hartke's political philosophy set the tone for his service in the Senate. When asked by a high school student about his role as a senator, he replied, “A Senator must represent his constituents to the best of his ability, and be mindful of their points of view. But he can never violate his conscience and still be true tot he task for which he was elected. Sometimes following conscience may put you in a lonesome minority, but if you have the courage of your convictions, there is nothing else you can do. What else can one do in a good conscience but to fight for his beliefs? I believe that when you voters elected me, you expected me to vote my conscience.” Hartke was often viewed as more liberal than most Hoosier voters, but he stayed in close contact with his constituents on periodic visits back home.

In the Democratic landslide of 1964, Hartke was reelected to the Senate, defeating State Senator Russell Bontrager. In his second term the seniority and clout that he had accumulated translated into greater respect for his actions. One of his new priorities in a second term was to study the Johnson policy on Southeast Asia and the growing number of troops being sent to fight a civil war between the North and South Vietnamese. It had been the United State's foreign policy for more than a decade to send advisers and then troops to help South Vietnam in its struggle to remain independent from North Vietnam. During Hartke's six years as a senator, the war had escalated under President Dwight Eisenhower, Kennedy, and now Johnson. In early 1965 Hartke began to question the purpose of America's presence in this area of the world.

In fact his first pronouncements on the Vietnam situation began during his first year in the Senate. In August of 1959 Hartke had talked with General Arthur Trudeau about the danger of chemical weapons being used against American advisers. He also wondered how the growing presence in Vietnam might affect relations with the Soviet Union, although he was an ardent anti-communist.

Nevertheless the senator backed the nation's foreign policy. He applauded President Kennedy for sending marines to the region in 1962 and said the American government was “trying to give them [ the South Vietnamese] the means to win.” An early advocate for veterans, Hartke was one of the first senators to support higher educational benefits for returning soldiers. In 1963 he boasted of his vote to provide the largest defense budget in the nation's history (more than $50 billion) that would be used to fight the biggest battles and the “smallest brush conflict in Vietnam. We have built up a fast moving arsenal of men and weapons with which to fight the jungle war of Vietnam.” Yet later that year, he questioned U.S. Aid being set to the regime of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. Hartke said Diem was turning his presidency into a “tyrannical dictatorship” that was “nullifying the good we do through AID [U.S. Agency for International Development], the Alliance for Progress and the Peace Corps.” He cosponsored a resolution with Senator Frank Church at Idaho to halt economic and military aid to Diem unless he ended martial law and repression of his people. On November 1, 1963, Diem was assassinated and his regime was overthrown. Three weeks later Kennedy was assassinated, and members of Congress lined up in support of the new Johnson administration.

By the end of 1963 there were approximately fourteen thousand troops in Vietnam, and the United States was spending $500 million to support them. General Maxwell Taylor told the senator and others that the need for American involvement would end by 1965. Hartke and many of his colleagues continued to support the policy of providing troops to calm the immediate crisis in South Vietnam and to bring about peace in the region. He supported the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964 and campaigned for re-election that year in support of the Johnson policy of containment in Southeast Asia.

In early 1965 Hartke began to question the progress being made in the war effort. In February he asked Johnson to “spell out our goals in Southeast Asia and the reasons why we are there.” While he believed in the Communist threat to the region and accepted the domino effect of countries being taken over one by one, he questioned why the United States was holding back the Communist advance with little help from its allies. He noted troops had been increased to about 21,000 and that the government was spending $2million a day on the war effort. “The President should and must tell America, first, and the the rest of the world what our posture is; what our aims are, what our interests and commitments are; how we intend to meet these commitments. We must know where we are going and what we are going to do in Vietnam,” Hartke said in a speech. Still, he added: “I will support any solution that gives promise of American withdrawal if and when we can leave without simply giving the area over to the Communists. I am proud of our men in Vietnam and salute them for their dedicated efforts in maintaining a free world.”

In 1966 Hartke was one of the first senators, along with Wayne Morse of Oregon and Ernest Gruening of Alaska, to question resumed bombing in North Vietnam. He wanted to work to stop the advancement of Communism, but Hartke believed the United States was shouldering too much of the burden itself and involved in an immoral bombing campaign killing innocent civilians. On January 27 Hartke and six other senators sent Johnson a letter calling for a suspension of the bombing in North Vietnam. In February he stated he would not vote to increase taxes to pay for the war, but instead work to make cuts in the foreign-aid budget to pay for the increasing cost of the American effort overseas. Hartke said he would not support unlimited escalation of the war and would not support funding at the expense of domestic programs. The senator's feelings were being noticed throughout the country and particularly by Johnson administration.

On February 21, 1966, the Evansville Press reported that the Pentagon had asked veterans organizations in the state to put pressure on the senator to stop his attackers on the administration's Vietnam policy. Later that month, Hartke led a debate in the Senate requesting the president to stop the bombing campaign in North Vietnam. Senator Lee Metcalf of Montana described Hartke as a “kind of catalyst' who brought together a group of like-minded senators who had “misgivings about the war.” Another senator described him as someone “not afraid to take a position. He is a person of independent judgment, energy, and drive.”

On March 6, 1966, the Washington Post reported that Hartke was becoming a “thorn in the side” of the administration. In a nationally syndicated Rowland Evans and Robert Novak column on March 8, it was reported that Hartke was emerging as a “peace bloc leader” and was gaining influence on the issue in the Senate at the expense of being alienated from his old friend Johnson. The Christian Science Monitor described Hartke as a “rising political power in the Senate who had the temerity to challenge the President on Vietnam.” The Chicago Tribune reported on March 12 that Hartke had a right to speak out against the war and blasted Johnson Press Secretary Bill Moyers for criticizing the senator and canceling a scheduled visit between Hartke and the president. According to one news account, Johnson, who had enjoyed a very close friendship with the senator, apparently referred to him as a “two bit mayor from a two bit town.” Hartke reportedly replied he did not care what the president felt about him, but Evansville was not a two-bit town.

At home, Hartke was also criticized by Hoosier banker Frank McKinney, a close friend and a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, who said “Indiana is solidly behind LBJ.” He also received criticism from Indiana newspapers and fellow Democratic politicians, including Governor Roger Branigan. Speaking to the Council on World Affairs, the senator said about the war: “We are locked into a battle that we can win and we must win. What I am trying to do along with many of my colleagues is to hasten a just and lasting solution so that more and more of our American boys will not be called upon to make that last great sacrifice in a foreign field.” He went on to say that dissent on public policy should not be considered disloyal. Hartke also worried how growing expenditures for the war would effect domestic spending on poverty programs, education, clean air and water, and interstate highways, and he did not want to increase taxes to pay for the war effort because that would have an adverse effect on middle and lower income people. His son, Jan, recalled that “it hurt him to take on his close friend, Lyndon Johnson, but he was unafraid of polls or powerful Presidents. Throughout the ensuing firestorm he stood like a tower, absolutely fearless, risking it all for what he though was right.”

The growing public split between the senator and the president was apparent in May of 1966 when Hartke refused to back a Johnson appointment to the Federal Aviation Administration because of a qualifications issue. The administration then refused to appoint the senator's choices for several Department of Agriculture posts. Later that year, Hartke became more troubled as American troop size in Vietnam increased to 175,000, and a disproportionate share of the war cost and burden was being born by U.S. Forces. He called for a United Nations conference to discuss how this issue could be addressed and how a political rather than a military solution could be achieved. Hartke urged consideration of a cease-fire between both sides, as he also began to publicly worry how the growing war might bring involvement from the Soviet Union and China.

Hartke became more frustrated in 1967 at the growing cost of war-- “Around $56,000 a minute”-- and its effect on other foreign and domestic budget items. He began to point out corruption in the South Vietnamese government and continued to rail against allies that were not supporting the effort to route out Communism in the region. He was becoming one of the Senate's leading doves along with Morse, William Fulbright, and Eugene McCarthy. In May Hartke said the government was so preoccupied with the war there appeared to be a vacuum in “leadership, national vigor, and moral strength.” He stated he did not believe Johnson would run again in 1968, saying if he did the Democratic Party would be deeply divided.

Hartke and many others in the Senate saw the goal of the United States shift from building a democracy in South Vietnam and improving social and political conditions in that country to one of discreet bombings of North Vietnam. This was not the policy in which Johnson campaigned with Hartke in Indiana in 1964. On November 11, 1967, the senator stated that “our policy has failed in Vietnam, destroying homes and hamlets and creating a mass production of refugees. Our allies have been conspicuously absent and the American taxpayer is footing the bill.... Neither the Viet Cong nor North Vietnam have capitulated to our bombing escalation, and the drain on America's potential is astounding. The set back to American's goals and fulfillment is astounding.” Hartke added that the United States had spent $90 billion on the war in just over two years.

In March 1968 Hartke said the war had lost its noble purpose. He criticized Johnson for not following through on a Senate Resolution to send the Vietnam issue to the security Council of the United Nations. By now there were 500,000 troops in the region with 18,000 dead and 95,000 wounded. The escalation of the war was costing more than $50 billion a year. “I have never advocated that the U.S. should pack up and come home if there is no immediate peace agreement,” Hartke said. “assuming that no such agreement is reached in the short term future, I do advocate that the U.S. avoid a wider war, especially through penetration of international boundaries.” He called for the South Vietnamese to have more responsibility for the ground war and called for a coalition government in that region.

On March 12 Senator McCarthy of Minnesota captured 42 percent of the New Hampshire Democratic primary vote, mainly as a way for voters to vent their frustration with the Johnson administration. Senator Robert Kennedy of New York entered the presidential race as an antiwar candidate on March 16, and on March 31 Johnson withdrew as a candidate for re-election. With that action, Hartke called on the president to use his “full resources to bring about negotiations and an end to the war.” On July 15, he published a book titled American Crisis in Vietnam, and at the Democratic National Convention in August the Hoosier senator urged adoption of a platform to end the bombing of North Vietnam, work for a cease-fire under jurisdiction of the UN, support a new general election in South Vietnam with all segments participating, and begin withdrawal of American military forces within six months of the new election in South Vietnam. He also advocated establishing a Department of Peace and a Secretary of Peace in the cabinet.

In November 1968 Richard Nixon was elected president with a plan to end the war “with honor.” But after nearly two years in office, the Nixon administration only escalated the war, sending troops to Laos and Cambodia and continuing the bombings in North Vietnam. In the fall of 1970 Hartke campaigned for a third term more vehemently opposed to the war than ever and facing tough criticism at home. He won re-election by less than five thousand votes against Congressman Richard Roudebush, who was handpicked by Nixon to run against him. This race was one of the closest contests in the nation and the tightest of Hartke's career in politics. First Johnson and then Nixon had tried to discourage the senator from criticizing U.S. policy on Southeast Asia, but Hartke continued to sharpen his message in the early 1970s, advocating withdrawal of military forces, opening peace talks between the two sides, promoting a cease-fire, and freeing prisoners of war. He voted in favor of legislation setting a timetable to bring the troops home, and accused Nixon of deceiving the American people with increasing troop strength and stepping up bombings.

Hartke briefly sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972 as an antiwar candidate. He withdrew from the race after a poor showing in the New Hampshire primary but continued to blast Nixon for his handling of the war. Over the next few years under the Nixon and Gerald Ford administrations, a cease-fire finally occurred and the war wound down as South Vietnam succumbed to the forces of the North Vietnamese. As Saigon fell in 1975, Hartke urged the Senate to play a more assertive role in the formulation of foreign policy so a president could not repeat another Vietnam. “The Vietnam War is an example of foreign policy by Presidential decree not democratic debate,” he said on May 1, 1975. Hartke advocated a stronger partnership between Congress and the executive branch in the formation of foreign affairs that he said was the vision of the founding fathers.

The senior senator from Indiana did not get to fulfill his commitment on those issues. In 1976 he sought an unprecedented fourth term, but was defeated by former Indianapolis mayor Richard Lugar. At the relatively young age of fifty-seven, Hartke began a new career as an attorney and lobbyist in Washington and in Indiana. He stayed active in state politics and encouraged many young people, including his children, to enter the field. In his later years, he formed a surprisingly close friendship with the man who defeated him, Lugar. “If you have to get beat, you may as well get beat by the best,” Hartke later said of his GOP opponent.

To Hoosiers, Hartke was a man who was not afraid to take a controversial stand. He was a strong proponent of Head Start and of Medicare in the late 1950s and early 1960s before such support was popular. “He was one of the strongest voices for Medicare. He took a real lead on that despite a lot of opposition in the state of Indiana. He was not afraid to take a tough controversial stand,” recalled Hamilton in an Indianapolis Star interview in 2003. As chairman of the Transportation Subcommittee of the senate Commerce Committee, Hartke worked to have automakers equip cars with seat belts and other safety equipment. He was instrumental in the creation of Amtrak and Conrail rail transportation systems in 1970, and he helped craft legislation creating student loan programs. Having served in the military during World War II and seeing the affects of the Vietnam War on young soldiers, Hartke used his chairmanship of the Veterans Affairs Committee to champion veteran's benefits and other related issues. He created the International Executive Service Corps, as organization that worked with retired businessmen, sending them to poor countries to help small businesses grow. He also won passage of a measure making kidney dialysis available to more people, leading the Congressional Record to cite the move as saving a half a million lives.

Hartke's early and vehement opposition to the Vietnam War may be the most lasting impression Indiana voters have of the former senator. Jan recalled how his father agonized about what action he would take regarding this issue. The senator, his wife Martha, and other children discussed the issue around the kitchen table for hours, but Hartke ultimately decided the war was morally wrong and would destroy progress on the Great Society social programs of the mid 1960s. Jan recalled how his father's action caused his friendship with the president to end, but he also recalled that Johnson reconciled with his shortly before his death in 1973, saying of Hartke “we fought with each other, but we also fought many great battles together.”

Hartke recalled that his break with Johnson hurt him back home and some Democrats never forgave him for it. But he took pleasure in referring to himself as the “great dove” and one of the first political leaders of the United States to forcibly speak out against the war that divided a country for more than two decades. Hartke remained adamant to the end and content with the leadership he provided for the country into his later years. He died quietly at home on July 27, 2003, at the age of eighty-four, and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Lugar had seen him just two weeks before his death in the Senate dining room with a foreign diplomat. “He was vigorous, enthusiastic, and optimistic as always. I will miss Vance Hartke very much,” Lugar said.

At his father's funeral, Jan eulogized him as someone who “pursued political power in the rough and tough arena of our democratic system, but he knew power was only ennobles by great achievements. He did not have much time for cynics or critics who he felt always had a too easy theory about why you should not try to help or care. Nor did he side with those who wished to denigrate the lawmaking process.” Commenting on the Indiana politician's death, Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, commended Hartke's “visionary leadership and his deep commitment to peace and multilateralism.”

References

• "Rupert Vance Hartke". Arlington National Cemetery. http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/rvhartke.htm. 
• Myrna Oliver (29 July 2003). "Vance Hartke, 84; Indiana Senator Opposed Johnson on Vietnam". Los Angeles Times. http://articles.latimes.com/2003/jul/29/local/me-hartke29. 
• Olson, James Stuart (1999). Historical Dictionary of the 1960s. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 222. ISBN 0-313-29271-X. http://books.google.com/books?id=X7KG3GgZUHoC. 
• "USIP Timeline". United States Institute of Peace. http://www.usip.org/about-us/usip-timeline. 
• "Honoring the Life of Senator Vance Hartke". Congressional Record, Senate. http://0-www.gpo.gov.library.colby.edu/fdsys/pkg/CREC-2003-07-31/pdf/CREC-2003-07-31-pt2-PgS10594-3.pdf. 
• "The Policy Debate on Patient Care Financing for Victims of End-Stage Renal Disease". Richard A. Rettig, Duke University. http://www.jstor.org/pss/1191314. 
• "USIP Timeline". United States Institute of Peace. http://www.usip.org/about-us/usip-timeline. 
• "Life in Legacy 2003". Life in Legacy. http://www.lifeinlegacy.com/2003/WIR20030802.html. 

External links

• Vance Hartke at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress

United States Senate
Preceded by William E. Jenner	United States Senator (Class 1) from Indiana 1959–1977 Served alongside: Homer E. Capehart, Birch Bayh	Succeeded by Richard Lugar
Political offices
New title Committee Created	Chairman of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee 1971–1977	Succeeded by Alan Cranston