Oklahoman Archives
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma County, Oklahoma
  Daily Oklahoman, The 
  Oklahoma City, OK 
  October 28, 2007

From his birth in a log cabin, to a multimillion-dollar fortune and the title of "uncrowned king of the Senate,” Robert S. Kerr's story could rival the against-all-odds story of Horatio Alger.

 

Along the way to success as an oilman, Oklahoma governor and U.S. senator, Kerr encountered triumph and tragedy in his dramatic role in the history of Oklahoma.
"He has climbed farther from such humble real estate than any member of Congress since Lincoln,” wrote the Associated Press in 1962, shortly before Kerr's death. "He is today one of the most powerful members of the Senate, and some even call him its uncrowned king.”
Kerr was born Sept. 11, 1896, in a log cabin near Ada in Indian Territory. His parents, William Samuel and Margaret Kerr, raised a family of seven. Robert Samuel Kerr was the second born and the first son, according to The Oklahoman archives.
Kerr was raised on a farm and educated in the public schools of Ada, then a town of fewer than 2,500 people. He attended Oklahoma Baptist University, East Central Teachers College and the University of Oklahoma. Kerr taught school for two years before becoming a magazine salesman for Curtis Publishing Co. in 1916.
He then accepted an offer to work in the law office of B. Robert Elliott of Webb City, Mo. Soon after the United States entered World War I, Kerr enlisted for officers' training and was commissioned a second lieutenant and served in a field artillery unit.
Kerr served nine months overseas before returning to Ada to enter the produce business. In 1919, he married Reba Shelton, but the first of a series of tragedies was about to happen. The couple's first children, twin girls, died at birth. Then his produce business burned to the ground in 1921.
Kerr began working in law, in the office of Judge J.F. McKeel of Ada. Kerr passed the bar examination in 1922, became McKeel's partner and began to sharpen the oratorical skills that would serve him in good stead as a politician.
But Kerr would again face tragedy when his wife and son died in childbirth in 1924. Kerr was inconsolable and vowed never to remarry, according to the Kerr exhibit at the Carl Albert Center at the University of Oklahoma.
Kerr buried himself in his work but found love again. The day after Christmas in 1925, he married Grayce Breene, the daughter of a Tulsa oil man. They had four children: Robert Samuel Kerr Jr., Breene Kerr, Kay Kerr Clark and William Graycen Kerr.

While working with McKeel, he became associated with a company engaged in oil well drilling. He became an attorney for Dixon Brothers Drilling Co. in Ada, where his brother-in-law, Jim Anderson, was in charge of drilling.

In 1929, he entered an oil partnership with Anderson and formed Anderson and Kerr Drilling Co. Kerr moved from Ada to Oklahoma City in 1931 to work full time in the oil business.
 

 

 

 

 

Los Angeles Times (1923-Currenl File); Jan 3. 1963;

ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Los Angeles Times (1881-1988), pg 15
 

Rites Planned in Oklahoma for Sen. Kerr

Washington - Funeral services for Sen. Robert S. Kerr (D-Okla) will be conducted Friday afternoon in the First Baptist Church, Oklahoma City, member of the family said Wednesday.

The body of the 66-year-old senator, who died of a heart ailment in Doctors' Hospital here Tuesday, was taken to Oklahoma City Wednesday by a White House jet.

Pastor Named

Conducting the services in Oklahoma City will be Dr. Herschel II. Hobbs, pastor of The. First Baptist Church, assisted by Dr. John Raley, Chancellor of Oklahoma Baptist University, Shawnee, Okla. and Dr. Frederick Brown Harris, Senate chaplain.

Temporary interment will be in Rose Hill Cemetery, Oklahoma City, with permanent burial later on the Kerr homestead near Ada, Okla.., where a memorial is being built at the site of the of cabin in which Kerr was born. The cabin still is standing.

Aides said scores of telegrams and telephone calls, expressing sorrow at the...

March 24, 2006
The Ada News

Disturbing move
Grave of Robert S. Kerr violated

-