Former Powerful Senator Dies

Former Sen. John C. Stennis, D-Miss., a deeply religious defense hawk who served four decades in the Senate and exercised a major influence on U.S. military policy, died of pneumonia Sunday afternoon at St. Dominic Hopital in Jackson, Miss. He was 93.

Nicknamed the “Conscience of the Senate” for his personal rectitude and his efforts to shape the Senate’s code of ethics, Stennis entered the Senate in 1947 and retired in 1988.

As chairman of the powerful Senate Armed Services committee for 12 years, beginning in 1969, Stennis played a key role in fighting deep cuts in the defense budget. He opposed judicial efforts to desegregate public schools in 1954, but three decades later he supported extending the Voting Rights Act.

Stennis was the last of the classic Southern gentlemen who so forcefully shaped the character of the midcentury Senate. He was crusty yet courtly, a stern moralist and a man of impeccable integrity with an almost mystical devotion to the Senate.

In 1954 Stennis served on the select committee that probed charges against the late Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, R-Wis., and became the first Senate Democrat to call for censure of the freeswinging Wisconsin senator. Although Stennis was a dedicated conservative and an outspoken foe of communism, he was offended by McCarthy’s tactics.

During the censure debate, Stennis rallied support from many colleagues who had been afraid to attack McCarthy. In a vigorous speech, he accused McCarthy of besmirching the Senate’s good name with “slush and slime.”

That same year, 1954, Stennis was one of the first members of Congress to caution against U.S. involvement in Indochina.

Yet 11 years later, when President Johnson made a large-scale commitment to fight in Vietnam, Stennis loyally backed his commander in chief.