Arkansas Air & Space Forces Association
Arkansas State Association
David D. Terry Chapter # 253
Jacksonville, AR
Lewis E. Lyle
Chapter # 270
Hot Springs, AR
Arkansas Air & Space Forces Association
David Dickson Terry
(1881–1963)
David Dickson Terry was a U.S. congressman for nine years.
His most important contributions
in that body were directed toward
his home city of Little Rock (Pulaski County),
where his family had a history of active involvement in political and community affairs.
His work in the U.S. House of Representatives helped establish a series of Arkansas
River dams. He is also remembered for his long association with local institutions
such as the Little Rock Boys Club.
Born in Little Rock on January 31, 1881, David
D. Terry was the son of William Leake Terry, a lawyer and U.S. congressman, and Mollie
C. Dickson Terry. He had two brothers, as well as a half sister born to his father’s
second wife after Mollie’s death in 1895. After secondary school at Bethel Military
Academy in Warrenton, Virginia, Terry attended the University of Virginia but did
not take a degree. In 1903, he earned a degree from the Law Department of the University
of Arkansas (UA), which was at that time based in Little Rock (and is now the University
of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law). He studied law at the
University of Chicago during 1906 and 1907 and then worked in a private Little Rock
practice with his father.
In 1910, Terry wed Adolphine Fletcher, who later became
a well-known activist for women’s rights and public education. They had four children:
David, Sarah, William, and Mary. Mary was wheelchair-bound from osteogenesis imperfect,
a debilitating bone disease. The Terrys spent much time in New England, where Mary
was treated. In 1928, the Terrys took in a fifth child, a foundling named Joseph.
After
the marriage, the Terry family lived in the Albert Pike Mansion, a structure acquired
by Adolphine’s father. The Terrys renovated it in the Colonial Revival style. It
is now known as the Pike-Fletcher-Terry House.
In 1918, Terry enlisted in the military
for service in World War I. He remained on military bases in the Midwest for the
duration of the conflict.
Terry served on the Little Rock School Board from 1929 to
1933. In 1928, he became president of the Little Rock Boys Club. He served also as
a board member at the organization’s national level. After the local club’s property
was destroyed by fire in 1930, Terry chaired a committee that raised $150,000 for
its reconstruction despite the economic depression that was then gripping the nation.
In
1932, in his first run for political office, Terry was elected to the Arkansas House
of Representatives as a Democrat. The next year, when U.S. Congressman Heartsill
Ragon resigned, Terry competed for the seat. By new state Democratic Party rules—rules
that one of Terry’s opponents, Brooks Hays, was instrumental in implementing—the
contest was a popular primary rather than a closed decision by party officials, as
was common at the time.
The race was one of the more controversial in state history.
After narrowly beating Sam Rorex for second place in a first round of voting, Terry
won a run-off with Hays by a total of 625 votes. Hays challenged the results on the
grounds that more people in Yell County had cast ballots than had paid a poll tax,
at that time a prerequisite for voting. Hays’s appeals failed, and Terry retained
the seat for the next nine years. In his 1981 memoir, Politics is My Parish, Hays
did not impugn Terry personally in the dispute. Rather, he professed a belief that
his enemies in the Rorex camp had defrauded him and that Terry was merely the beneficiary.
Terry
achieved congressional longevity despite occasionally taking positions against popular
sentiment in his home state. For example, he opposed a bill that would have given
bonuses to veterans, citing concerns for fiscal prudence. Yet Terry was a champion
for Arkansas in the House, even while remaining a fierce and unequivocal advocate
for Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal agenda. Terry’s first bill was a $10 million appropriation
to provide relief for indebted Arkansas schools. His congressional work was instrumental
in the construction of the Pine Bluff Arsenal.
In 1942, Terry declined renomination
to the House in order to run for the Senate. His loss to John L. McClellan marked
the end of his career in elected office. Though he considered a second run for the
Senate in 1944, he decided against it because of the strength of the field, which
included J. William Fulbright and the incumbent Hattie Caraway. He ran for governor
instead. After placing third in a field of three during the Democratic primary, he
came out in support of primary rival Ben Laney, who went on to win the governorship.
Terry’s
public career continued when Laney appointed him director of Flood Control, Water
and Soil Conservation in the Arkansas Resources and Development Commission. The assignment
allowed him to continue the work he began in Congress toward the development of the
Arkansas River. In 1936, he had initiated a Tennessee Valley Authority–style project
on the Arkansas River by passing a bill to survey the river for the purposes of flood
control and navigation. Though the dam project was never completed as such, Terry’s
survey bill was integral in establishing the dams that were later part of the McClellan-Kerr
Arkansas River Navigation System.
Terry died of Parkinson’s disease on October 6,
1963. He is buried in Little Rock’s Mount Holly Cemetery. Lock and Dam Number 6 of
what is now known as the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Naviga
tion System was named
for him before its dedication in October 1968.
For additional information:
Fletcher-Terry Papers. Center for Arkansas History and
Culture. University of Arkansas at
Little Rock, Little Rock, Arkansas.
Forster, Bobbie. “David D. Terry: He Made the
River a Way of Life.” Arkansas Democrat. October 3, 1968, p. 8D.
Hays, Brooks. Politics
is My Parish. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981.
Obituary of David
D. Terry. Arkansas Democrat. October 7, 1963, p. 1A, 2A.
John C. Williams
Arkansas Times