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Stuart Symington was a Democratic Senator from Missouri. | 1901-06-26 | 1988-12-14 | Amherst, Massachusetts |
Stuart Symington was a Democratic Senator from Missouri. He was a strong backer of Adlai E. Stevenson for the Democratic presidential nomination. Paradoxically, Symington later emerged as an ardent supporter of a nuclear-armed Israel while also authoring key Senate legislation to limit the spread of such weapons.1
In 1924 Symington married Evelyn Wadsworth (1903-1972), daughter of Senator Wadsworth family of New York and Alice Hay Wadsworth, a daughter of the Secretary of State John Hay; her brother James Jeremiah Wadsworth was later United States Representative to the United Nations.2
In April 1963, Shimon Peres discussed nuclear weapons with Senator Symington, who was then a ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Symington reportedly told Peres, "Don't be a bunch of fools. Don't stop making atomic bombs. And don't listen to the administration. Do whatever you think best."1
Footnotes
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Hersh, Seymour M. The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy. Random House, 1991. Chapter 8, 9. ↩︎
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Who's Who in America, vol. 14, 1926-1927 (Chicago: A. N. Marquis, 1926), entry "Wadsworth, Alice Hay (Mrs. James Wolcott Wadsworth, Jr.)" (children Evelyn (Mrs. Stuart Symington), James Jeremiah, Reverdy), https://archive.org/details/whoswho141926 ; Livingston County Historian's Office, "Wadsworth Family: A Subject Finding Aid" (2019, rev. 2022), section II (marriage 1924). ↩︎