Symington, Stuart

Symington, Stuart

(1901–88) U.S. senator; born in Amherst, Mass. He served in the army during World War I, attended Yale (1919–23), and worked as an executive for several companies, becoming in 1939 the president and chairman of the Emerson Electric Manufacturing Company in St. Louis. He was assistant secretary of War for Air and then the first secretary of the air force during the first Truman administration. He ran for the Senate from Missouri in 1952 and was reelected three times. He retired in 1975.