Wilber M. Brucker
1894 - 1968
Saginaw-born Wilber M. Brucker, skillful swordsman in the courts of law, was to become secretary of the army.
He had a square, solid build, bulldog jowls, and he walked always with purposeful stride toward his many goals and triumphs.
He was born June 23, 1894, in South Saginaw, son of Ferdinand Brucker, a Democratic congressman, although most of his life, Wilber Brucker eloquently espoused the Republican cause as one of its foremost national leaders.
In 1930, when he was only 36, he was elected on the Republican ticket to serve a term as governor. Because of his age he was called the “boy governor,” and not scornfully, for he was a popular choice. He had been Michigan attorney general before that.
He was graduated from Saginaw High School and then attended the University of Michigan. There he waited table in an Ann Arbor boarding house and worked at summer jobs to help pay his way through law school. Just before graduation from the University of Michigan, he was ordered to the Mexican border with the 33rd infantry of the Michigan National Guard. He asked for and got a 48-hour leave, then hurried to Lansing and took and passed the first Michigan State Bar examination. In World War I, he went to officer training camp at Fort Sheridan, Illinois, where he was commissioned a second lieutenant in 1917. He served in France with the famed Rainbow Division and fought in all its major battles. In 1918, he was promoted to first lieutenant. He was twice cited for bravery and was awarded the Silver Star Medal with Palm. He served with the Army of Occupation until May, 1919, when he returned to Saginaw. That same year, he was named Saginaw County assistant prosecutor. That began an illustrious public service career.
In 1922, he was elected Saginaw County prosecutor and was reelected in 1924. In 1927, he was appointed an assistant Michigan attorney general. In 1928, he was named attorney general. He was elected to succeed himself as attorney general. In that office he won newspaper headlines for his prosecution of the House of David in Benton Harbor and its leader, “King” Ben Purnell, on charges of fraud and immoral conduct. He won acclaim, too, as a result of a murder case which led him to call a 23-man grand jury in Detroit, with a spirited probe and brooming of the Motor City’s thriving rackets and mobsters. As a questing, courageous attorney general, he became politically potent. He was elected governor in 1930 when financial depression palled the land. During his term he strengthened the Michigan State Police by adding 100 men to the force, helping to curb the growing surge of crime. He was credited with promoting construction of the State Police administration building in East Lansing. As governor, he cut his own salary 10 percent to $4,500 a year because he said he felt “like a vagabond king.” That was an exemplary gesture when the depression’s want and poverty were rampant in the nation.
Brucker lost his bid for reelection in Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Democratic New Deal presidential landslide in 1932. He held no other public office until the Republicans regained power nationally. Meantime, he worked tirelessly in GOP upper echelons to strengthen the party. In the 1936 election, he was defeated by Democrat Prentiss M. Brown in a run for the U. S. Senate.
After that, he remained in private law practice until 1954 when he was appointed Department of Defense general counsel. As such, he appeared at hearings when the late Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy was dueling with army bigwigs, accusing them of Communism and a lengthy array of remissions, which came to naught.
Throughout his career, Brucker was counted a master trial lawyer and thorough craftsman in the legal profession. He combined eloquence with a resonant voice and nimble sense of humor for all his somewhat courtly and reserved appearance.
When Army Secretary Robert T. Stevens resigned in 1955, Defense Secretary Charles E. Wilson asked Brucker to take over and he did. As Army Secretary, he won plaudits in 1957 for administering the National Guard’s intervention in Little Rock, Arkansas, to help desegregate a high school there. It was a brave and resolute move for the era.
For all Brucker’s gentility and personal charm, he had an old soldier’s toughness. “The Stars and Stripes will not be hauled down in Berlin,” Army Secretary Brucker said in that tense city, shortly after Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev demanded immediate withdrawal of U. S. troops there in 1958.
After Dwight D. Eisenhower’s retirement, Brucker departed from the cabinet. Then he served on the Michigan apportionment commission which redistricted the state legislature. He won a sheaf of honors as a lawyer and served as chairman of several important committees of the State Bar Association of Michigan.
Brucker was a lifelong friend of education. In 1966, an elementary school in Bridgeport was named for him. Honorary doctor of philosophy degrees were conferred on him by Hillsdale and Alma Colleges and the University of Detroit. His portrait hangs among distinguished alumni of the University of Michigan.
He liked baseball and golf. He neither smoked nor drank and was a devout churchman. He was active in Masonic organizations and served as Grand Commander of the Michigan Knights Templar.
He was a Saginawian to his last day and a frequent visitor to the city of his birth. “Saginaw is my home town,” he always said proudly.
He died in 1968 in Detroit, where his law practice finally was berthed.