Exactly two decades after Gov. Albert C. Ritchie traveled to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago hoping to be his party’s nominee for president in 1932, another Maryland governor, Theodore Roosevelt McKeldin, boarded a Baltimore & Ohio train for the Republican National Convention, also in Chicago, as rumors swirled that he’d play a major role at the convention — possibly as vice president on Dwight D. Eisenhower’s ticket. Ultimately, Ritchie lost the nomination to New York Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt who won the election that November.
McKeldin, one of Maryland’s favorite sons, was born and raised as one of 11 children of a stonemason-turned city police officer who drank in humble circumstances on Norway Street in South Baltimore.
After completing grammar school, he went to work as a $20-a-month office boy and dug graves while attending Baltimore City College at night. He earned a law degree in 1925 from what is today the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law.
Known as the “boy orator,” he entered politics two years later by joining the administration of Baltimore Mayor William F. Broening as a mayoral aide.
McKeldin went on to be Baltimore mayor from 1943 to 1947 before becoming a two-term governor when he went to Annapolis in 1951.
He got on the Eisenhower bandwagon early and in July 1952, boarded a special eight-car B&O train bringing the state’s delegation to Chicago’s Grand Central Station.
“McKeldin resplendent in a blue tie with a map of the Chesapeake Bay on it and the inevitable black-eye susan in the lapel, stepped from the train into a crowd of 80 young ‘We-Like-Ike ‘ers,’ who stumbled through the words of ‘Maryland, My Maryland,’” The Sun wrote.
“Theodore R. McKeldin, who parlayed his powers of oratory into a governorship, will make the most important speech of his career this week. He will nominate Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower at the Republican National Convention,” the newspaper reported.
Hopes rose in Marylanders that his event would be a curtain raiser to being nominated for the number two spot on the ticket.
Reporters observed McKeldin doing a jig in his hotel room and repeating over and over: “I’m going to nominate Ike. I’m going to nominate Ike.”
At 12:15 a.m. July 11, dressed in a dark blue suit and wearing a tie covered with Republican elephants, he mounted the platform.
He told the crowd of cheering delegates that Eisenhower could win “a glorious victory in November by appealing to all segments of the voters.”
“Here is the man to unite our nation. He is a strong man — the Hercules to sweep the stench and stigma from the Augean stable of the Washington administration,” he said in his nominating speech.
Eisenhower was nominated on the first ballot with McKeldin bellowing to reporters, “This is sure the day of jubilo.”
But it wasn’t to be.
The vice presidential nomination went instead to a young California congressman named Richard M. Nixon.
McKeldin returned to Maryland on Sunday morning to hundreds of supporters waiting at Mount Royal Station who carried “Our Boy Teddy” and “The Tops” signs.
While national office eluded him, he proved to be a transformative figure in both the state and city.
He was elected mayor again and served from 1963 to 1967.
McKeldin became the only Republican in state history to serve two terms as governor and two terms as Baltimore’s mayor.
He presided over the rewriting of the Baltimore City charter and was identified with many of the state’s biggest highway and redevelopment projects, including the State Office Building in Baltimore, Charles Center and the Inner Harbor urban renewal projects.
McKeldin died at his Goodale Road home in Homeland on Aug.11, 1974, two days after his nemesis Nixon was forced to resign from the presidency.
“His major legacy, however, was not physical. It was moral,” The Sun observed in an editorial lauding McKeldin’s accomplishments.
“He was a liberal Republican who preached and believed in brotherhood. He set an example that helped Maryland avoid much of the ugliness and trauma that accompanied desegregation elsewhere.”
At the time of the 1954 Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation of races in public schools, McKeldin said, “We have to rid our souls of prejudice.”
“Whatever the cause, whatever his position, one had the unmistakable feeling that Mr. McKeldin meant what he was saying. Public office in his hands, was indeed a bully pulpit, in the sense the original T.R. had in mind.
“The McKeldin years seem in retrospect political by chance and non-partisan by design. But once his mission was begun, it acquired an unmistakable record of good will,” according to the editorial.