Happy Chandler

Happy Chandler

Albert Benjamin Chandler Sr. was an American politician from Kentucky. He represented Kentucky in the U.S. Senate and served as its 44th and 49th governor. Chandler also served as the second Commissioner of Baseball from 1945 to 1951. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982. Chandler died in 2010 at the age of 98.

About Happy Chandler in brief

Summary Happy ChandlerAlbert Benjamin \”Happy\” Chandler Sr. was an American politician from Kentucky. He represented Kentucky in the U.S. Senate and served as its 44th and 49th governor. Chandler also served as the second Commissioner of Baseball from 1945 to 1951. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982. His grandson, Ben Chandler, later served as congressman for Kentucky’s Sixth District. Chandler died a month before his ninety-third birthday; at the time, he was the oldest living former Kentucky governor as well as the earliest serving former governor. The Chandler Medical Center at the University of Kentucky is named in his honor. He is survived by his wife, two sons, and three grandchildren. He also had three half-siblings, one of whom died when he was 13 years old and the other two were raised by his mother in Florida. His father allegedly rescued his mother from an orphanage and married her when she was 15, but no record of their marriage has ever been found. In 1899, their mother, still in her teens and unable to cope with raising two young children, abandoned the family and left the state and left her sons with their father. In his autobiography, Chandler said that his mother’s leaving them was his earliest memory and that he sought to honor her by helping her raise his two younger brothers. He died in 2010 at the age of 98. He leaves behind a wife, three sons, a daughter, and a grandson, who served in the United States House of Representatives from Kentucky from 1983 to 1986. He had a son and a daughter-in-law, both of whom are still living in Kentucky and have served as members of the Kentucky House of Reps.

and the Kentucky Senate. Chandler was a member of the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee. He served as Kentucky’s lieutenant governor from 1928 to 1939. He then served as governor from 1940 to 1955. In 1945, Chandler resigned his Senate seat to succeed the late Kenesaw Mountain Landis as commissioner of baseball. His most significant action as commissioner was the approval of Jackie Robinson’s contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers, effectively integrating Major League Baseball. After his term as commissioner, Chandler returned to Kentucky and won a second term as governor in 1955. He made three more unsuccessful runs for governor in 1963, 1967, and 1971. His endorsement of dark-horse candidate Wallace G. Wilkinson was seen as critical to Wilkinson’s successful gubernatorial campaign in 1988. Chandler opposed parts of Roosevelt’s New Deal and openly disagreed with the president’s decision to prioritize European operations in World War II over the war in the Pacific. He retired from state politics in 1988 and remained active in state politics and events until his death in 2010. He left behind a son, Ben, who was elected to the Kentucky Sixth District congressional seat in 1998 and later served in Congress as a congressman for the Sixth District of Kentucky. Chandler is buried in Corydon, Kentucky, where he lived with his wife and three children. He never married.