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Created page with "{{Infobox officeholder |name=Thomas Dale Alford, Sr. |image=Dale Alford of AR.jpg |office= U.S. Representative for<br>Arkansas's..."
{{Infobox officeholder
|name=Thomas Dale Alford, Sr.
|image=Dale Alford of AR.jpg
|office= [[United States House of Representatives|U.S. Representative]] for<br>[[Arkansas]]'s 5th congressional district, since disbanded
|term_start=January 3, 1959
|term_end=January 3, 1963
|preceded=[[Brooks Hays]]
|succeeded=Position eliminated by [[reapportionment]]
|office2=Little Rock School Board
|term_start2=1955
|term_end2=1958
|birth_date=January 28, 1916
|birth_place=New Hope, Pike County, Arkansas
|death_date=January 25, 2000 (aged 83)
|death_place=[[Little Rock]], Arkansas
|resting_place=Mount Holly Cemetery in Little Rock
|spouse=L'Moore Smith Alford (married 1940-1999, her death)
|children=Thomas D. Alford, Jr. (1943-1989)<br>
L'Moore Fontaine Alford Goss (1942-2002)<br>
Anne Maury Alford Winans<br>
'''Parents''':<br>
Thomas H. and Ida Womack Alford
|party=[[Democratic Party|Democrat]]
|religion=[[Episcopalian]]
|occupation=[[Ophthalmologist]]
|alma_mater=[[Arkansas State University]]<br>
University of Central Arkansas]]<br>
[[University of Arkansas]] for Medical Sciences]
|branch=[[United States Army]]<br>
(Army Medical Corps)
|battles/wars=European Theater of Operations of [[World War II]]
|rank=[[Captain]]}}
'''Thomas Dale Alford, Sr.''' (January 28, 1916 – January 25, 2000), was an [[United States|American]] [[ophthalmologist]] and [[politician]] from his native [[Arkansas]]. From 1959 to 1963, he served as a [[Conservative|Democrat]] in the [[United States House of Representatives]] for the since defunct 5th congressional district, based about the capital city of [[Little Rock]].
==Background==
Alford was born in tiny New Hope near Murfreesboro in Pike County in southwestern Arkansas to Thomas H. Alford (1894-1985) and the former Ida Womack (1897-1978).<ref name=findagrave/> He attended [public schools at Rector in Clay County in northeastern Arkansas. He graduated from [[high school]] in 1932, a year ahead of schedule.<ref name=obit/>
Alford attended [[Arkansas State University|Arkansas State College]] in Jonesboro in eastern Arkansas, the [[University of Central Arkansas in Conway in Faulkner County, and he received his medical degree in 1939 from the [[University of Arkansas]] for Medical Sciences at Little Rock. He served his internship at St. Anthony's Hospital in [[Oklahoma City]] and his residency in general surgery at Missouri Pacific Hospital in Little Rock. He received post-graduate training at the [[University of Illinois]] at Urbana-Champaign.
While he was in college, Alford was a [[radio]] sportscaster who covered the [[football]] games of the Southwest Conference. He turned down an opportunity to become a national broadcaster to concentrate on his medical career.
==Military and medical practice==
Alford served as a [[captain]] during [[World War II]] in the [[United States Army]] Medical Corps from 1940 to 1946. He was on active duty as a surgeon in the [[European Theater]] of operations. Afterwards from 1947 to 1948, he was an assistant [[professor]] at [[Methodist]]-affiliated [[Emory University]] College of Medicine in [[Atlanta]], [[Georgia]].<ref name=findagrave>Thomas Dale Alford Sr. (1916-2000) - Find A Grave Memorial, accessed October 13, 2021.</ref>
On his return to Arkansas, he opened a private practice and was the chief assistant in opthalmological surgery at the Little Rock Veterans Hospital. He was active in all levels of the Arkansas and American Medical Associations as well as the American Board of Opthalmology, College of Surgeons, International Surgeons, and Cataract Refractive Surgeons. He served on the teaching faculty at the University of Arkansas Medical School at Little Rock from 1948 to 1958.
==Political career==
From 1955 to 1958, he was a member of the elected Little Rock School Board during the [[Segregation|desegregation]] of Little Rock Central High School. He was also an appointed member of the trustees of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
Alford was elected to Congress as a write-in candidate in the 1958 [[general election]]. The next successful write-in candidate elected to the House was the [[conservative]] [[Republican Party|Republican]] [[Joe Skeen]], who won in [[New Mexico]] in 1980. Alford jumped into the election against [[incumbent]] U.S. Representative [[Brooks Hays]], who had endorsed the integration of Little Rock public education. Alford ran almost entirely on Hays' support for civil rights. Alford supporters printed thousands of stickers with his name on them and handed them out at polling places. Hays maintained a lead during the counting until an extra twenty boxes arrived bearing ballots with Alford stickers. Ultimately, Alford prevailed, 30,739 (51 percent) to Hays' 29,483 (49 percent).<ref>Billy Hathorn, ''The Republican Party in Arkansas, 1920-1982'' (College Station, Texas|College Station]], [[Texas]], Texas A&M University history dissertation, 1983), pp. 168-170.</ref>
In 1960, Alford won his second term in the House with 57,617 votes (82.7 percent) to Republican L. J. Churchill (1902-1987) of Dover in Pope County in northwestern Arkansas, who received only 12,054 ballots (17.3 percent) though [[Richard M. Nixon]] polled 43 percent in his losing race to [[John F. Kennedy]] for the Arkansas [[electoral votes]]. Churchill was a highly regarded civic and political figure in Dover. A Cumberland [[Presbyterian]](a conservative denomination) and a Mason, he was elected to the positions of [[mayor]] of Dover and member of the municipal school board, both offices nonpartisan.<ref name=ljc/><ref>Hathorn, p. 192.</ref>
He had been the state chairman of the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service of the [[United States Department of Agriculture]]. He operated L. J. Churchill's General Merchandise Store and was a member of the board of directors of the Bank of Dover.<ref name=ljc>"L.J. Churchill, 84, dies at Dover," ''The Arkansas Gazette,'' October 3, 1987, obituary section.</ref>
President Kennedy appointed Representative Alford as delegate and keynote speaker at the 51st Inter-parliamentary Conference held in 1962 in [[Brasilia]], [[Brazil]].
As a congressman, Alford appointed future [[General]] [[Wesley Clark]], a confidant of later President [[Bill Clinton|William Jefferson Blythe "Bill" Clinton]], as a cadet at the [[United States Military Academy]] at West Point, [[New York]]. Clark later headed forces of the [[NATO|North Atlantic Treaty Organization]] and sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004, but the nomination went instead to [[John Kerry]] of [[Massachusetts]], who served in the [[Vietnam War]] but lost to [[George W. Bush]]'s reelection campaign.
===Two gubernatorial races===
Alford's Little Rock-based district was merged with the 2nd district of chairman [[Wilbur Mills]], long-term chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, after the 1960 census revealed that Arkansas had grown at less than the national average during the 1950s. Rather than face certain defeat in the 1962 Democratic primary against Mills, at the time an icon in Arkansas politics, Alford instead chose to enter the primary against incumbent [[Governor]] [[Orval Faubus|Orval Eugene Faubus]], who polled a majority over Alford, former Governor Sidney Sanders "Sid" McMath, Vernon H. Whitten, and two other candidates. Faubus polled 208,996 ballots (51.6 percent) to McMath's 83,437 (20.6 percent), Alford's 82,815 (20.4 percent), and Whitten's 22,377 (5.5 percent). Faubus then prevailed with ease over the Republican nominee [[Willis Ricketts]], a pharmacist from Fayetteville who ran on a "reform" agenda.<ref>Hathorn, pp. 198, 200.</ref>
Alford ran for governor again in 1966, when Faubus declined to do so. Alford finished fourth in the Democratic primary with 53,531 votes (12.7 percent). He received 11,000 fewer voters than his old nemesis Brooks Hays, who with 64,814 (15.4 percent) finished third in the primary balloting. The Democrat runoff positions went to former Arkansas Supreme Court Justices [[James D. Johnson]] and [[Frank Holt]]. Johnson narrowly defeated Holt in the Democratic runoff but then lost to [[Moderate Republican]] [[Winthrop Rockefeller]] in the general election. Hays subsequently relocated to Winston-Salem, [[North Carolina]], where he failed in a House comeback bid in 1972.<ref>Hathorn, p. 170, 249.</ref>
==Civic leadership==
Alford was a founding member of St. Mark's [[Episcopal]] Church in Little Rock and an active member of Trinity Episcopal Church. He was a former board member of the All Saints Episcopal School, a boarding school in Vicksburg, [[Mississippi]]. He was a past president of the Arkansas State Opera Association and a member of the Phi Chi medical fraternity and Phi Kappa Alpha. He was past state commander of the Arkansas American Legion and an officer of the National Commission on Americanism. Alford was also affiliated with the Veterans of Foreign Wars and Disabled American Veterans. He was a Mason and a member of the Little Rock Country Club and the Yacht Club.<ref name=obit/>
==Death==
Alford died in Little Rock of congestive heart failure. He was preceded in death by his wife, the former L'Moore Smith (1919-1999), whom he married in 1940. She was the 1959 "Arkansas Woman of the Year."<ref>L'Moore Fontaine Smith Alford (1919-1999) - Find A Grave Memorial, accessed October 13, 2021.</ref> He also lost his namesake son, Dale Alford, Jr. (1943-1989), an independent film producer and director who died in an [[automobile]] accident in [[Arizona]] at the age of forty-six..<ref> Thomas Dale Alford Jr. (1943-1989) - Find A Grave Memorial, accessed October 13, 2021.</ref> Survivors included two daughters, L'Moore Fontaine Alford (1942-2002), an educator and artist, and Anne Maury Alford Winans, both of Little Rock;<ref>L'Moore Fontaine Alford (1942-2002) - Find A Grave Memorial, October 13, 2021.</ref> daughter-in-law Kay Alford, widow of Dale, Jr., also of Little Rock; a brother, Dr. Boyce Alford of Pine Bluff in Jefferson County in southern Arkansas; a sister, Joyce Alford Gardner of Bryant in Saline County south of Little Rock; five grandchildren, and one great-granddaughter.<ref name=obit>Thomas Dale Alford obituary, ''Arkansas Democrat-Gazette,'' January 26, 2000.</ref>
Services were held at the Trinity Episcopal Church. He is interred at historic Mount Holly Cemetery in Little Rock.<ref name=findagrave/>
==References==
{{reflist}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Alford, Dale}}
[[Category:Arkansas]]
[[Category:Physicians]]
[[Category:Former United States Representatives]]
[[Category:Democrats]]
[[Category:Conservatives]]
[[Category:World War II]]
[[Category:United States Army]]
[[Category:Radio]]
[[Category:Episcopalians]]
|name=Thomas Dale Alford, Sr.
|image=Dale Alford of AR.jpg
|office= [[United States House of Representatives|U.S. Representative]] for<br>[[Arkansas]]'s 5th congressional district, since disbanded
|term_start=January 3, 1959
|term_end=January 3, 1963
|preceded=[[Brooks Hays]]
|succeeded=Position eliminated by [[reapportionment]]
|office2=Little Rock School Board
|term_start2=1955
|term_end2=1958
|birth_date=January 28, 1916
|birth_place=New Hope, Pike County, Arkansas
|death_date=January 25, 2000 (aged 83)
|death_place=[[Little Rock]], Arkansas
|resting_place=Mount Holly Cemetery in Little Rock
|spouse=L'Moore Smith Alford (married 1940-1999, her death)
|children=Thomas D. Alford, Jr. (1943-1989)<br>
L'Moore Fontaine Alford Goss (1942-2002)<br>
Anne Maury Alford Winans<br>
'''Parents''':<br>
Thomas H. and Ida Womack Alford
|party=[[Democratic Party|Democrat]]
|religion=[[Episcopalian]]
|occupation=[[Ophthalmologist]]
|alma_mater=[[Arkansas State University]]<br>
University of Central Arkansas]]<br>
[[University of Arkansas]] for Medical Sciences]
|branch=[[United States Army]]<br>
(Army Medical Corps)
|battles/wars=European Theater of Operations of [[World War II]]
|rank=[[Captain]]}}
'''Thomas Dale Alford, Sr.''' (January 28, 1916 – January 25, 2000), was an [[United States|American]] [[ophthalmologist]] and [[politician]] from his native [[Arkansas]]. From 1959 to 1963, he served as a [[Conservative|Democrat]] in the [[United States House of Representatives]] for the since defunct 5th congressional district, based about the capital city of [[Little Rock]].
==Background==
Alford was born in tiny New Hope near Murfreesboro in Pike County in southwestern Arkansas to Thomas H. Alford (1894-1985) and the former Ida Womack (1897-1978).<ref name=findagrave/> He attended [public schools at Rector in Clay County in northeastern Arkansas. He graduated from [[high school]] in 1932, a year ahead of schedule.<ref name=obit/>
Alford attended [[Arkansas State University|Arkansas State College]] in Jonesboro in eastern Arkansas, the [[University of Central Arkansas in Conway in Faulkner County, and he received his medical degree in 1939 from the [[University of Arkansas]] for Medical Sciences at Little Rock. He served his internship at St. Anthony's Hospital in [[Oklahoma City]] and his residency in general surgery at Missouri Pacific Hospital in Little Rock. He received post-graduate training at the [[University of Illinois]] at Urbana-Champaign.
While he was in college, Alford was a [[radio]] sportscaster who covered the [[football]] games of the Southwest Conference. He turned down an opportunity to become a national broadcaster to concentrate on his medical career.
==Military and medical practice==
Alford served as a [[captain]] during [[World War II]] in the [[United States Army]] Medical Corps from 1940 to 1946. He was on active duty as a surgeon in the [[European Theater]] of operations. Afterwards from 1947 to 1948, he was an assistant [[professor]] at [[Methodist]]-affiliated [[Emory University]] College of Medicine in [[Atlanta]], [[Georgia]].<ref name=findagrave>Thomas Dale Alford Sr. (1916-2000) - Find A Grave Memorial, accessed October 13, 2021.</ref>
On his return to Arkansas, he opened a private practice and was the chief assistant in opthalmological surgery at the Little Rock Veterans Hospital. He was active in all levels of the Arkansas and American Medical Associations as well as the American Board of Opthalmology, College of Surgeons, International Surgeons, and Cataract Refractive Surgeons. He served on the teaching faculty at the University of Arkansas Medical School at Little Rock from 1948 to 1958.
==Political career==
From 1955 to 1958, he was a member of the elected Little Rock School Board during the [[Segregation|desegregation]] of Little Rock Central High School. He was also an appointed member of the trustees of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
Alford was elected to Congress as a write-in candidate in the 1958 [[general election]]. The next successful write-in candidate elected to the House was the [[conservative]] [[Republican Party|Republican]] [[Joe Skeen]], who won in [[New Mexico]] in 1980. Alford jumped into the election against [[incumbent]] U.S. Representative [[Brooks Hays]], who had endorsed the integration of Little Rock public education. Alford ran almost entirely on Hays' support for civil rights. Alford supporters printed thousands of stickers with his name on them and handed them out at polling places. Hays maintained a lead during the counting until an extra twenty boxes arrived bearing ballots with Alford stickers. Ultimately, Alford prevailed, 30,739 (51 percent) to Hays' 29,483 (49 percent).<ref>Billy Hathorn, ''The Republican Party in Arkansas, 1920-1982'' (College Station, Texas|College Station]], [[Texas]], Texas A&M University history dissertation, 1983), pp. 168-170.</ref>
In 1960, Alford won his second term in the House with 57,617 votes (82.7 percent) to Republican L. J. Churchill (1902-1987) of Dover in Pope County in northwestern Arkansas, who received only 12,054 ballots (17.3 percent) though [[Richard M. Nixon]] polled 43 percent in his losing race to [[John F. Kennedy]] for the Arkansas [[electoral votes]]. Churchill was a highly regarded civic and political figure in Dover. A Cumberland [[Presbyterian]](a conservative denomination) and a Mason, he was elected to the positions of [[mayor]] of Dover and member of the municipal school board, both offices nonpartisan.<ref name=ljc/><ref>Hathorn, p. 192.</ref>
He had been the state chairman of the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service of the [[United States Department of Agriculture]]. He operated L. J. Churchill's General Merchandise Store and was a member of the board of directors of the Bank of Dover.<ref name=ljc>"L.J. Churchill, 84, dies at Dover," ''The Arkansas Gazette,'' October 3, 1987, obituary section.</ref>
President Kennedy appointed Representative Alford as delegate and keynote speaker at the 51st Inter-parliamentary Conference held in 1962 in [[Brasilia]], [[Brazil]].
As a congressman, Alford appointed future [[General]] [[Wesley Clark]], a confidant of later President [[Bill Clinton|William Jefferson Blythe "Bill" Clinton]], as a cadet at the [[United States Military Academy]] at West Point, [[New York]]. Clark later headed forces of the [[NATO|North Atlantic Treaty Organization]] and sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004, but the nomination went instead to [[John Kerry]] of [[Massachusetts]], who served in the [[Vietnam War]] but lost to [[George W. Bush]]'s reelection campaign.
===Two gubernatorial races===
Alford's Little Rock-based district was merged with the 2nd district of chairman [[Wilbur Mills]], long-term chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, after the 1960 census revealed that Arkansas had grown at less than the national average during the 1950s. Rather than face certain defeat in the 1962 Democratic primary against Mills, at the time an icon in Arkansas politics, Alford instead chose to enter the primary against incumbent [[Governor]] [[Orval Faubus|Orval Eugene Faubus]], who polled a majority over Alford, former Governor Sidney Sanders "Sid" McMath, Vernon H. Whitten, and two other candidates. Faubus polled 208,996 ballots (51.6 percent) to McMath's 83,437 (20.6 percent), Alford's 82,815 (20.4 percent), and Whitten's 22,377 (5.5 percent). Faubus then prevailed with ease over the Republican nominee [[Willis Ricketts]], a pharmacist from Fayetteville who ran on a "reform" agenda.<ref>Hathorn, pp. 198, 200.</ref>
Alford ran for governor again in 1966, when Faubus declined to do so. Alford finished fourth in the Democratic primary with 53,531 votes (12.7 percent). He received 11,000 fewer voters than his old nemesis Brooks Hays, who with 64,814 (15.4 percent) finished third in the primary balloting. The Democrat runoff positions went to former Arkansas Supreme Court Justices [[James D. Johnson]] and [[Frank Holt]]. Johnson narrowly defeated Holt in the Democratic runoff but then lost to [[Moderate Republican]] [[Winthrop Rockefeller]] in the general election. Hays subsequently relocated to Winston-Salem, [[North Carolina]], where he failed in a House comeback bid in 1972.<ref>Hathorn, p. 170, 249.</ref>
==Civic leadership==
Alford was a founding member of St. Mark's [[Episcopal]] Church in Little Rock and an active member of Trinity Episcopal Church. He was a former board member of the All Saints Episcopal School, a boarding school in Vicksburg, [[Mississippi]]. He was a past president of the Arkansas State Opera Association and a member of the Phi Chi medical fraternity and Phi Kappa Alpha. He was past state commander of the Arkansas American Legion and an officer of the National Commission on Americanism. Alford was also affiliated with the Veterans of Foreign Wars and Disabled American Veterans. He was a Mason and a member of the Little Rock Country Club and the Yacht Club.<ref name=obit/>
==Death==
Alford died in Little Rock of congestive heart failure. He was preceded in death by his wife, the former L'Moore Smith (1919-1999), whom he married in 1940. She was the 1959 "Arkansas Woman of the Year."<ref>L'Moore Fontaine Smith Alford (1919-1999) - Find A Grave Memorial, accessed October 13, 2021.</ref> He also lost his namesake son, Dale Alford, Jr. (1943-1989), an independent film producer and director who died in an [[automobile]] accident in [[Arizona]] at the age of forty-six..<ref> Thomas Dale Alford Jr. (1943-1989) - Find A Grave Memorial, accessed October 13, 2021.</ref> Survivors included two daughters, L'Moore Fontaine Alford (1942-2002), an educator and artist, and Anne Maury Alford Winans, both of Little Rock;<ref>L'Moore Fontaine Alford (1942-2002) - Find A Grave Memorial, October 13, 2021.</ref> daughter-in-law Kay Alford, widow of Dale, Jr., also of Little Rock; a brother, Dr. Boyce Alford of Pine Bluff in Jefferson County in southern Arkansas; a sister, Joyce Alford Gardner of Bryant in Saline County south of Little Rock; five grandchildren, and one great-granddaughter.<ref name=obit>Thomas Dale Alford obituary, ''Arkansas Democrat-Gazette,'' January 26, 2000.</ref>
Services were held at the Trinity Episcopal Church. He is interred at historic Mount Holly Cemetery in Little Rock.<ref name=findagrave/>
==References==
{{reflist}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Alford, Dale}}
[[Category:Arkansas]]
[[Category:Physicians]]
[[Category:Former United States Representatives]]
[[Category:Democrats]]
[[Category:Conservatives]]
[[Category:World War II]]
[[Category:United States Army]]
[[Category:Radio]]
[[Category:Episcopalians]]