Soon after I moved to California, I drove to the town of Walnut Creek to see this bank festooned with a huge peace sign. The bank was under the direction of Pete McCloskey. McCloskey, a Congressman, had earlier beaten Shirley Temple Black in a race for Congress, a campaign detailed in the book The Sinking of the Lollipop. In 1971 he launched a campaign against Richard Nixon. McCloskey, a Marine who won the Navy Cross, two Purple Hearts, and a Silver Star in the Korean War, had visited Vietnam three times and was horrified by the napalm attacks and the use of cluster bombs.
Of course he lost to Nixon, but he kept fighting for good causes. One of his bills was the Endangered Species Act of 1973.
In 1987 he was sued for libel for $35 million by Pat Robertson, the “Christian” evangelical who was then running for President. Robertson claimed he was a combat Marine in the Korean War; McCloskey said it was a lie. When many other Marine officers said they were willing to testify that Robertson had avoided combat, Robertson then said he didn’t have time to both sue and run for President. He dropped the suit and paid the court costs.
In 2006 McCloskey said that the Republican Party was hostile to progressive causes, and he became a registered Democrat. He died a few days ago at age 96. He was a true patriot.
Some of the information for this post was taken from McCloskey’s obituary written by Robert D. McFadden in the New York Times, (May 10, 2024), p. A 21.
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