Thomas E. Dewey

Thomas Edmund Dewey was born on March 24, 1902, in Owosso, Michigan as the son of the local newspaper publisher. He attended Owosso Public Schools, never missed a day K thru 12 and graduated June of 1919.

Tom went to University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, Michigan, in the fall of 1919 to study choral music and received his B.A. degree in 1923 and graduated from Columbia University Law School in 1925.

From 1931 to 1933 he served as chief assistant to the U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York and then as U.S. attorney. In 1934-1935 he was a special assistant to U.S. Attorney General Homer Stille Cummings.

Later in 1935, he was appointed special prosecutor for a grand jury investigation of vice and reacketeering in New York City which he completed in 1937.

Dutch Schultz (Arthur Flegenheimer) born in 1902, is one of the best known New York mobsters of the prohibition era. After dropping out of school in the fourth grade and turning to a life of crime, Schultz started with pickpocketing and petty theft, moved up to bootlegging and smuggling, and eventually left his mark in bloody gang wars. In 1933 he was acquitted of income tax evasion, but much of his power was lost to Lucky Luciano. Nevertheless, he was a board member in Luciano's national crime syndicate, and drew attention from special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey.

J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI, named Schultz "Public Enemy #1". In 1935 Dutch tried to convince his associates to assassinate Dewey and even put a $10,000 reward on his head. However Murder Inc. opted instead to murder Schultz along with three associates in Oct. of 1935. Lucky did not believe it wise for the mob to kill cops, judges or government attorneys which would result in more heat on the gang.

Dutch Schultz's life is one of the best examples of mafia brutality, and is portrayed in movies such as The Gangster Wars (1981) and Hoodlum (1997).

In 1938, Thomas Dewey ran for governor of New York against Lehman but lost. Two years later he made an unsuccessful bid for the Republican presidential nomination. But in 1942 he was elected Governor of New York and he won re-election in 1946 and 1950.

As governor, Dewey exercised firm control over the legislature and gave the state an efficient, businesslike administration. Among his leading achievements were a large-scale highway building program, the first state law anywhere against racial or religious discrimination in employment, improved unemployment and disability benefits, and an effective labor mediation board. His record was sufficiently progressive to keep the Democrats on the defensive, while his skill in handling patronage and his fiscal conservatism prevented any potential Republican split.

In 1944, Dewey had won the Republican presidential nomination. Here is a controversial campaign poster that didn't help him much. He was defeated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Although Dewey had put away Lucky Luciano for tax evasion and more, he also approved Luciano's transfer to a low security prison in 1942 and eventual parole and deportation to Italy in 1946, because Lucky had helped the U.S. government federal investigators protect the New York City docks with Lucky's mob influence. Luciano also contacted crime bosses in Sicily to help the Allied powers defeat Mussolini by helping U.S. Military Intelligence infiltrate the Axis-held island and eventually liberate all of Italy. Ironically in return for his 'invaluable help' in serving his country, federal agents worked with Dewey to have Luciano eventually released from prison.

Tom Dewey was nominated to run for the presidency in 1948, this time against President Harry Truman. Unexpectedly, he suffered another defeat, against all predictions at the polls; the wide lead given him by the public opinion polls led to fatal over-confidence. His own lackluster campaign, Democratic President Harry S. Trumans's attacks on the "do-nothing" Republican 80th Congress, and the country's prosperity gave Truman an upset victory.

Tom Dewey died on March 16, 1971, in Bal Harbour, Florida.

In retrospect, one has to wonder if Thomas E. Dewey would have become President in 1944, would he have dropped the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima, Japan as Harry Truman did on Aug. 6, 1945, which is undoubtably one of the most significant events in U.S. History. This will be debated forever.