Jack Garner's Friends

Clara Driscoll, 58, is the restless, magnetic daughter of a pioneer Texas land baron who left an estate now valued at $10,000,000. She is president of one Corpus Christi bank, largest stockholder of another. She is known as "The Savior of the Alamo" because she once put up $65,000 (later repaid by the State) to keep commercial structures away from Texas' shrine. By the time she married Newspaperman Hal Sevier in 1906, Clara Driscoll had written two novels (The Girl of La Gloria, In the Shadow of the Alamo) and a musical comedy (Mexicana)* which the Brothers Shubert produced on Broadway. Democratic National Committeewoman Clara Driscoll Sevier gave liberally to the 1932 Roosevelt-Garner campaign fund. Husband Hal Sevier became Franklin Roosevelt's Ambassador to Chile. They were divorced last year and Clara Driscoll Sevier changed her name to Mrs. Clara Driscoll.

Big, powerful Eugene Ben Germany, 46, was born in Nolan county, Texas, janitored his way through Southwestern University at Georgetown. He taught school, studied geology, got in on the lush 1920 Texas oil boom. He now owns oil wells in Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, raises hogs and cattle on his two farms and acts as mayor of Highland Park, fabulously wealthy suburb of Dallas.

Clara Driscoll and E. B. Germany have one thing very much in common: they are co-chairmen of the Texas Garner-for-President Club (five rooms, nine employes in Dallas). Proceeding on Garner's friend Emil Hurja's theory that early leaders stay on top, last week Mr. Germany and Mrs. Driscoll unmistakably pushed chaparral Jack Garner into the 1940 Presidential race/- on a national scale. Over their signatures the T. G. F. P. Club appealed to 40,000 ranking Democrats throughout the U. S.:

"As the course of time runs on, it has become evident that the people of the United States have tremendous confidence in ... John N. Garner. We have, therefore, organized a general committee looking to the drafting of JOHN NANCE GARNER for PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. ... Are you willing to help us in this aim?"

Enclosed in each letter were two metered postcards (possible, postage: $800): "Sign one yourself--ONLY IF YOU BELIEVE IN JOHN NANCE GARNER AND HIS PROVEN RECORD and ask some friend to sign the other. . . . Just drop them into the mail; no postage stamps necessary."

* Not to be confused with the Mexican Government's musical Mexicana, recently running on Broadway.

/- In Washington Michigan's Republican hat tosser, Senator Arthur Hendrick Vandenberg, announced that he was ready for "responsibilities of a broader nature."

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