Biographer captures Sen. Mansfield's remarkable life

By GAIL SCHONTZLER, Chronicle Staff Writer

Mike Mansfield was famous for answering questions with a curt, "Yep," "Nope" or "I don't know."

But veteran reporter Don Oberdorfer figured out how to get Montana's taciturn senator to talk about his extraordinary life, from his days as a penniless Butte coal miner, to the longest-serving U.S. Senate leader, to ambassador to Japan.

Oberdorfer finagled 32 interviews, starting when Mansfield was 95 years old, by using gentle persistence and the mutually understood fiction that the interviews were for another purpose.

The result is the new biography, "Senator Mansfield: The Extraordinary Life of a Great American Statesman and Diplomat" (Smithsonian, $35).

"There are parts of this fine new biography of Senator Mike Mansfield, as he pleads with Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson not to plunge America into war in Southeast Asia, that could break your heart," wrote a New York Times reviewer.

Oberdorfer, 72, Washington Post diplomatic reporter for 17 years and now a Johns Hopkins University professor, spoke Monday at Bozeman's Emerson Cultural Center before a audience of about 50 people.

Mansfield "told me that the Vietnam War was the greatest tragedy to befall the United States in his lifetime," Oberdorfer said. Mansfield had helped persuade Kennedy not to get involved in a major war in Vietnam, but could not dissuade Johnson, "who, with Texas bravado, was determined we should not lose a war on his watch."

Oberdorfer recalled Mansfield's incredible life story. Born in New York City in 1903 to Irish immigrants, Mansfield lost his mother at age 7. His dad sent him and two sisters to live with an uncle in Great Falls. During World War I, 14-year-old Mike lied his way into the U.S. Navy. He later joined the Army and then the Marines, which shipped him off to China. That sparked his fascination with Asia.

Mansfield returned to Butte and worked in the copper mines for nine years, until he met his wife, Maureen, a teacher.

He always gave Maureen all the credit for his success in life. She insisted the young man who'd never graduated from high school get an education. He ended up at the University of Montana, where he earned a master's degree and a professor's job teaching Asian history, until Maureen pushed him into politics.

In 1942, Mansfield won election to Congress and in 1952 to the Senate, despite vicious attacks by the red-baiting Sen. Joe McCarthy.

As Senate majority leader for 16 years, Mansfield led successful battles for major civil rights laws, creation of Medicare, a nuclear test ban treaty and the vote for 18-year-olds. He was known for his bipartisanship, much of which has been lost since he retired in 1976. As he told Oberdorfer: "'A little hate seems to be getting in.'"

Although they spent hundreds of hours talking before Mansfield's death in 2001, Oberdorfer said, "There was something about him that was hard to reach personally. I think it had to do with his early life. I don't think he let anybody get that close but Maureen."

Reader Comments