Voyle Dixon Rector (1891-1964)

From the North Bend Eagle, August 6, 1942.

  The Strangest Names In American Political History makes a rare stop in Nebraska to examine the life of Voyle Dixon Rector, a WWI veteran, and creamery manager who made his lone foray onto the political stage in 1942 when he entered into the Republican primary race for U.S. Senator from Nebraska. A native of Tobias, Nebraska, Voyle Dixon Rector was born in that town on December 28, 1891, the son of Edward Terwilliger and Tessie Belle (Dixon) Rector.  

   A student in the public schools of Omaha, Rector would graduate from the Central High School in 1911 as president of his class and shortly thereafter enrolled at Dartmouth College. His time here saw him acknowledged as playing "a star game at left tackle" on the school's football team, which also featured his younger brother Virgil, who played fullback. Rector graduated in 1915 with his degree and continued his studies at the Pomona College in California the following year. In September 1917 he married Lillian Farnam Chapin (1892-1986), to who he was wed until his death. The couple would have two sons, Robert Chapin (1921-1978) and Irving Chapin Rector (1923-2002). 

   Rector would begin his business career in the mid-1910s, being a salesman for the Fairmount Creamery in Syracuse, New York. He was later briefly a resident of Buffalo, New York (being recorded as such in an October 1916 edition of the Daily Nebraskan), where he was a creamery superintendent. Following American entrance into the First World War, Voyle Rector enlisted for service and by early 1917 was stationed at Fort Snelling in Minnesota. Commissioned as a captain in August of that year, Rector was also stationed at Camp Dix and later was a battery commander in the 350th Field Artillery, serving overseas.  He would receive an honorable discharge in March 1919 at Camp Meade.

A youthful Voyle Rector, from the Omaha Daily Bee, November 12, 1911

   Within a few years of his return from military service, Voyle Rector had returned to the creamery business and in 1921 had been made manager at the Fairmont Creamery branch in Detroit, Michigan. This post was followed by his being named as assistant general territory manager for the Fairmont Creamery in Omaha, continuing in that post well into the 1930s. 

   In 1942 Voyle Rector made his first move into state politics when he announced that he'd be seeking the Republican nomination for U.S. Senator from Nebraska in that summer's primary election. As one of three GOP candidates vying for the nomination, Rector's campaign platform was featured in a number of Nebraska newspapers through the summer of 1942, detailing his "jobbing" Nebraska agricultural products in previous years, as well as his longstanding connection to creameries in the state. Amongst other tenets of his platform, Rector advocated for "protection of private business and property"; using Nebraska farm products in the manufacture of "industrial alcohol, rubber, and explosives" to aid in the ongoing war effort; and pressed for the use of farm products for plastics and motor fuel manufacture after the war had concluded. 

From the North Bend Eagle, August 6, 1942.

  On primary election day in August 1942, Voyle Rector polled third with 10, 624 votes, 50,000 votes behind winning candidate Kenneth S. Wherry. Wherry, in turn, would go on to defeat five-term incumbent Senator George William Norris that November and would represent Nebraska in the Senate until his death in 1951. Little information could be located on Rector's life following his Senate loss. Some years prior to his death he and his wife relocated to California, and on December 28, 1964, his 73rd birthday, Voyle Rector died in Los Angeles. He was survived by his wife and sons and was later returned to Nebraska for burial at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park, a cemetery that is also the resting place of Experience Estabrook, profiled here in July 2011.