L. R. Kershaw - Public and Political Service

Public and Political Service

Active in state politics since 1905, L. R. Kershaw was a delegate to Oklahoma State and Muskogee County conventions. In 1906 he was nominated to the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention for the 74th District of Indian Territory, which became the new state of Oklahoma in 1907. In 1910, a young L. R. Kershaw played host to James S. Sherman's visit to Oklahoma City, and was in the driver's seat during the tour of downtown Oklahoma City. Usually sporting a weathered cowboy (stockman's) hat, Kershaw (shown in the far right driver's seat, above) broke from tradition and wore a straw boater along with the rest of the welcoming party when they hosted the Vice President of the United States. The protective detail from the Secret Service and the Oklahoma City Police Department are wearing derby hats, police caps or dark cowboy hats. A year later, Sherman became the first sitting Vice President to fly in an airplane. Sherman was also the first Vice President to throw out the first ceremonial pitch at a professional baseball game, the first incumbent Vice President to be renominated by a National Convention, and the only Vice President whose marble bust in the U. S. Capitol is wearing eyeglasses.

As a public servant and as a business leader in his hometown of Muskogee, Oklahoma, Mr. Kershaw was a member of the Council of Defense during World War I. The Council responsibilities included the prevention of price gouging or seed hoarding by farmers and merchants during commodities shortages, and to allow all consumers equal protection against profiteering or seed shortages. From 1924 through 1926, he was the Muskogee County Republican Party Chairman. In 1924, he was appointed as a delegate to the Republican National Convention held in the Public Auditorium in Cleveland, Ohio. He was instrumental in having the Puerto Rico delegation recognized in a convention that nominated Calvin Coolidge for the Presidency of the United States. While it is notable that Oklahoma was one of the few southern states that did not carry the Republican ticket, this election was the last one in modern history that New York City voted Republican, the first convention in history to be broadcast by nationwide radio and the first GOP convention to provide for equal representation by women.

That same year, he caused a bit of a scandal when he left his first wife (Trallia Lott) and son (William R Kershaw) to marry his secretary, Clara Amanda Harrison, of Princeton, Indiana. Their first child, Patricia Ann was born the next year, in 1925. In 1927 they produced their first set of twins, Robert Eugene and Elizabeth "Betty" Kershaw and in 1933 they produced a second set of twins, Jean Mary and Joan Mary Kershaw. While Mr. Kershaw never served in the American military, his 2nd wife Clara could trace her ancestry back to the American Revolution, in which one of her ancestors, James Dowdle, served as a Revolutionary War soldier. She was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Daughters of the American Colonists.

In 1930, Kershaw was a Republican candidate for the Governor of the state of Oklahoma. He withdrew early in the race when he observed that the populist Democratic candidate for governor, William "Alfalfa Bill" Murray would easily be elected in the heavily-Democratic Oklahoma. He was mentioned as a potential appointee to a number of other offices during that period, including the US Congress for the 2nd District in Oklahoma, for the State of Oklahoma Highway Commission, for the State of Oklahoma Election Board and for the Agricultural Credit Corporation during the Great Depression in the 1930s.