Willis SMITH, Congress, NC (1887-1953)

SMITH, Willis, a Senator from North Carolina; born in Norfolk, Va., December 19, 1887; at the death of his father, moved with his mother to North Carolina in 1889 and attended the public schools in Elizabeth City; graduated from Atlantic Collegiate Institute, Elizabeth City, N.C., in 1905, Trinity College (now Duke University), Durham, N.C., in 1910, and from the law school of Duke University in 1912; admitted to the bar in 1912 and commenced the practice of law in Raleigh, N.C.; during the First World War served in the United States Army at Fort Monroe, Va.; inheritance tax attorney of North Carolina 1915-1920; member, State house of Representatives 1928-1932, serving as speaker 1931; member of commission preparing rules for federal courts in North Carolina in 1933; observer at Nuremburg Trials in 1946; United States delegate to the Interparliamentary Union in Istanbul, Turkey, in 1951, and served as chairman of the American delegation to the Interparliamentary Union in Bern, Switzerland, in 1952; elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate on November 7, 1950, to fill the vacancy caused by the death of J. Melville Broughton and served from November 27, 1950, until his death in the naval hospital at Bethesda, Md., June 26, 1953; interment in Oakwood Cemetery, Raleigh, N.C.

Bibliography

U.S. Congress. Memorial Services. 83rd Cong., 2nd sess., 1954. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1954.

Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present