February 25, 1976
Page 4381
TRIBUTE TO SUMNER T. PIKE
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, Sumner Pike of Lubec, Maine, died at his home over the weekend.
Some of our colleagues will remember him as one of the original members of the Atomic Energy Commission, as one of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal advisers, or as a member of the Securities and Exchange Commission. I will remember him, as well, as a friend.
I have served with him for 10 years on the Roosevelt Campobello International Park Commission. His brother, Radcliffe, was the Commission's executive secretary, and is now its naturalist consultant. Since the island lies off Lubec, I had the pleasure of many hours of enjoyable conversation with Sumner from time to time over the past dozen years. He possessed one of the most active, engaging and sensible minds to which I have ever been exposed.
The Pike family is something of a legend in Lubec.. It was said that Sumner's grandfather Jabez Pike smuggled wool from Canada during the Civil War.
This rather odd expression of Yankee independence on the part of their grandfather was a source of great pride for Sumner, his brothers Rad, Alger and Moses, and sister, Marjorie McCurdy.
And it gives a clue to Sumner's special nature.
When a man dies, it is customary to list his accomplishments — the things he has built, influenced or possessed; the jobs he has held and the policies he has espoused.
Sumner was a successful businessman. He made separate fortunes in oil and on Wall Street. But his money allowed him to buy virtually every book published in America each year, and his curiosity made him read them.
He served ably on two Federal commissions and in a variety of other posts. But it was Sumner's philosophy that was the real measure of the man.
He described himself once as "leftist Republicans go." He certainly looked upon his government service as public service, and while on the SEC gained a solid reputation for protecting the interests of investors and the public. He also served on a committee charged with studying the economic effects of monopoly power and the causes of poverty. And he offended some friends in the oil industry by standing firm against higher crude oil prices during World War II.
But Sumner never succumbed to "Washington fever." In fact, he told a reporter last year, "If anything, I had a Washington allergy. I always felt I was just camping out there." He quit the Capital in 1946, saying he was "getting stale" at his SEC post. But by the end of the year he was back to begin serving on the new Atomic Energy Commission. He quit Washington for good in 1952, served in the Maine Legislature, and characteristically, resisted running for governor.
But while his active service ended except as a member of the Park Commission, which he found too enjoyable to be considered work, he retained an active, omnivorous interest in government. in politics, in the sciences, and in society.
He was the kind of man who would spend long hours helping his brother mail out packages of experimental seeds, at no charge of course, to those who wrote to ask for them.. He was also the kind of man who would enjoy the knowledge that those were seeds for a "gasless" bean, which he and his brother had developed.
Mr. President, I will miss Sumner Pike. I will miss his company, his stories, his wit and an independent, logical, sensible way of living life that served him well for 84 years.
I learned much from him. And there was much to learn.
I ask unanimous consent that several newspaper articles relating to his life be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the articles were ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
[From the Washington Post, Feb. 22, 1976]
SUMNER PIKE, FDR APPOINTEE, DIES
(By B. D. Coeen)
Sumner T. Pike, a Down East Yankee in the New Deal political court, and one of the original members of the Atomic Energy Commission, died in his sleep yesterday at his home in Lubec, Maine. He was 84.
The proud grandson of Jabez Pike, a smuggler of Canadian wool at the time of the Civil War, Mr. Pike was a businessman who made not one, but two private fortunes before entering government service in 1940.
Like his smuggler grandfather, Mr. Pike was a man who refused to be squeezed into any mold: He was an oil man whom many described as a liberal — he described himself as "leftist as Republicans go"— and a Republican who served in high. government posts under Democratic Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S Truman.
In 1939, when Mr. Pike was preparing to retire from the business world to head Down East to Lubec to "mess around in local affairs," he was asked to come to Washington as an adviser to FDR brain truster Harry Hopkins. A year later, Mr. Pike was appointed a Commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The SEC appointment was the first of many posts Mr. Pike was to fill before his appointment to the fledgling Atomic Energy Commission in 1946.
In 1942, President Roosevelt asked Mr. Pike to move from the SEC to the position of a "dollar-a-year" assistant to the Federal Price Administrator, with the specific job of "straightening out" the oil price problem.
A year later, as chief of the OPA fuel price division, Mr. Pike incurred the wrath of the oil industry, including some old personal friends, by opposing an increase in crude oil prices. This position won him the accolades of the liberal daily PM and the support of farm labor and other New Deal groups.
In 1948, Mr. Pike resigned his SEC post in a four line letter in which he told President Truman that he, Pike, was "getting stale."
"In accepting your resignation," replied President Truman, "I cannot accept the thesis which you put forward with such Yankee terseness. I refuse to believe that you are getting stale on the job, and I feel that the public will be the loser in your determination to retire."
"That's the first time I was ever accused of being terse," Mr. Pike told a reporter at the time, "but I am getting a little stale. All I'm going to do is go back to Maine where I belong and get in a lot of fishing. Maybe I'll get restless after four or five months and maybe I'll take a job ... "
That was in March. Seven months later, Mr. Pike had to give up fishing in Maine as President Truman appointed him one of the newly formed Atomic Energy Commission's first five commissioners.
Mr. Pike's tenure as a watchdog for the fledgling atomic energy industry proved almost as controversial as his grandfather Jabez's wool importing practices.
During his term of office, Mr. Pike criticized atomic scientists for being too cautious in releasing data and too security-minded, and warned that atomic energy might well become a political football. He spoke out on behalf of J. Robert Oppenheimer, whom some were calling a security risk — and all of that at the height of the Cold War and the beginning of the McCarthy era.
In a 1948 speech, Mr. Pike said, "The commission is thinking of issuing a low but determined growl at some of our scientific personnel to see if we can't shake some information — especially engineering information — out into public view.
"This, I might say, causes the commission both some concern and some amusement, since it is commonly thought that only the military mind tends to keep everything Top Secret."
When Mr. Pike's first AEC term expired in 1950, and President Truman submitted his name for a second term, the nomination became the focus of a Senate battle that lasted more than a month.
President Truman stood by his nominee, despite a 5 to 4 vote against Mr. Pike by the congressional Atomic Energy Committee. The President accused Mr. Pike's opponents of playing politics with the nomination.
Those opposing the nomination, led by Sen. Bourke Hickenlooper (R.Iowa), charged that among other things, Mr. Pike was too willing to share secret data with our allies; was aligned with "loose security" practices, and had "dragged his feet" on the development of the H-bomb.
Despite such charges and because of support from Senate Democrats who pointed out that most of the charges were old ones that had long been laid to rest, Mr. Pike was confirmed by the Senate on a 55 to 24 vote, a margin that surprised detractors and supporters alike.
About a year later Mr. Pike once again insisted on returning to Lubec, and that time he succeeded. But he did not completely disappear from the national scene.
In April, 1954, he spoke out in defense of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who had been cut off from top secret information, despite the fact that his head was a depository of most of the nation's atomic secrets. "I never had the slightest question of Dr. Oppenheimer's devotion to the United States," said Mr. Pike, taking a highly unpopular stand at the time. "I may be what they are calling 'politically naive,' or `soft on communism,' but I don't think so."
Four years later Mr. Pike was terming U.S.atomic security "deficient. The government is hiding things that only a few select people here and all the Russians know," he said in a speech at the University of New Hampshire.
Mr. Pike is survived by three brothers, Radcliffe B., Alger W. and Moses B., and a sister, Mrs. George McCurdy, all of Lubec.
[From the New York Times, Feb. 23, 1976]
SUMNER T. PIKE, 84, DEAD; FORMERLY HEAD OF A.E.C.
LUBEC, ME., Feb. 21.— Sumner T. Pike, who served five years as chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission under President Harry S. Truman, died in his sleep at his home here Saturday. He was 84 years old.
He leaves three brothers, Radcliffe, Alger and Moses, and a sister, Mrs. George McCurdey, all of Lubec.
MADE TWO FORTUNES
(By William M. Freeman)
Sumner Pike, who once described himself as "leftish — as Republicans go," served two Democratic Presidents in high offices after having made a fortune in oil and another in Wall Street.
He accepted a post as a member of the Atomic Energy Commission in 1946 after four years with the Securities and Exchange Commission under President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
His appointment to the S.E.C. was looked on with some uneasiness by the business community, which otherwise. approved his record as a practical businessman and financier. However, the doubts in Wall Street were allayed by his work as a commissioner, serving chiefly in Philadelphia, to protect investors and the public.
One of his achievements was a plan to aid small business. He also was a coauthor of specific recommendations or the improvement of life insurance, based on an S.E.C. study.
Mr. Pike was also instrumental in drawing up an overall power program for defense and considering changes in the basic securities acts.
His service was interrupted late in 1942, when he was asked by Mr. Roosevelt to take a brief leave of absence to assist Leon Henderson, then the Price Administrator, to "straighten out the crude oil tangle."
"IN THE MIDDLE"
His job was not regarded as easy, since he was "in the middle," between Mr. Henderson, the strong-willed protector of consumer interests, and Harold L. Ickes, the outspoken Petroleum Administrator for War as well as Secretary of the Interior.
Mr. Pike stood firmly against higher prices for crude oil, which lost him some friendships in the industry, but he won the backing of farm, labor and New Deal groups. This led to his appointment in late 1944 to a three man board to handle the disposal of billions of dollars worth of surplus property.
He resigned his Washington posts in March1946, writing in laconic Down East style to President Truman, "I am getting stale on this job."
However, he was back in Washington in October as a member of the five man Atomic Energy Commission, an appointment that required him to divest himself of all security holdings and all business interests. He was not even permitted to advise members of his family on business matters.
With David E. Lilienthal, the chairman, and the other members, Rear Adm. Lewis L. Strauss, W. W. Waymack and Prof. Robert F. Bacher, he shared the responsibility of serving as "trustee for the world" of the power released by splitting the atom.
For a two-year term at $15,000 a year, the salary then paid to Cabinet officers, he was one of the administrators of a $1.6 billion enterprise with an annual payroll in 1946 of $200 million, land holdings 11 times the size of the District of Columbia and full responsibility for what was termed "the most dangerous but hopeful power in the material world."
Mr. Pike was born Aug. 30, 1891, in Lubec, where his family lived and operated several enterprises. He was a descendant of the Civil War officer Zebulon Pike, for whom Pikes Peak was named.
He was a 1913 graduate of Bowdoin College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He attended the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration for a brief period, but left, because, as he once put it, "the money ran out just before the Harvard-Yale game."
Mr. Pike joined Stone & Webster, a large utility concern in Boston, in 1913. In 1917, following this country's entrance into World War I, he became a captain in the Coast Artillery and served as an instructor in the officers' training camp at Fort Monroe, Va.
On his return to Stone & Webster he became purchasing agent and assistant to the manager of a subsidiary, the Eastern Texas Electric Company in Beaumont.
A skilled petroleum geologist, Mr. Pike prospected for oil and found it, becoming a vice president of two concerns, one in Dallas and another in Kansas City, Mo. His work was in selling equipment for retail filling stations, garages and oilfield concerns,
In 1922 he turned to Wall Street as assistant to the president of G. Amsinck & Company, which was involved in trade with Central and South America.
He added insurance in 1924 as secretary of the Continental Insurance Company and, later, with the America Fore group of fire insurance companies, directing investments.
This was followed by a post in 1928 as a vice president and director of Case, Pomeroy & Company, a Wall Street investment house.
Mr. Pike spent 11 years with the company, developing oil and mining enterprises in many parts of the world. By January of 1939 he had made a second fortune and he decided to retire and take a trip around the world.
On his return he accepted a post as a dollar-a-year man, advising Harry L. Hopkins, then the Secretary of Commerce, on business matters.
A COMMERCE AIDE
His status as a Republican in a Democratic Administration apparently was no hindrance to his rise, for a few months later he was named to represent the Department of Commerce on the Temporary National Economic Committee, whose task it was to study the concentration of economic power in monopolies and "the causes of poverty in the midst of plenty."
Mr. Pike was appointed to the S.E.C. in 1942, while continuing with the monopoly investigation until the committee expired some months later.
Mr. Pike, a bachelor, well over 6 feet tall, had a distinguished appearance with a ruddy complexion. He was an omnivorous reader — with books piled on tables, chairs and the floor of his home — a good poker player and a good talker, speaking rapidly and with full knowledge of his subject.
He was an overseer of Bowdoin, which awarded him an LL.D. in 1941, as did Bates College, also in Maine, in 1945.
[From the Bangor Daily News, May 31, 1975]
THE REAL POWER
(By Donald R. Larrabee)
LUBEC.— Sumner Pike, elder statesman and citizen of the world, sat in wonderful serenity
looking out a window at the birds who gather at his feeder constantly. We were both 20 years younger when we last talked over dinner at the Metropolitan Club in Washington. He seemed even wiser now.
At 84, Sumner Pike is mentally as sharp as ever. It was a treat to reminisce in the living room of the family home. I had come to Washington County, first time ever, to give the commencement address at the University of Maine in Machias and to visit the Roosevelt Campobello International Park. Sumner Pike — all the Pikes — have contributed to the preservation of FDR's "Beloved Island" and to the beauty of this place.
In my talk at Machias, I noted that most people in government are immersed in their own importance and it is the happy, successful public figure who learns humility at the start and somehow manages to keep it. The best thing Washington types can do is remind themselves that the real power of America lies not within the geographic bounds of the Federal City but with the people who live beyond it.
Sumner knew power in Washington. He was there for a dozen years, on the Securities and Exchange Commission and with the Atomic Energy Commission in its formative period in the early years of the nuclear age. We wondered if he missed that excitement.
"I never got infected with Washington fever," he replied. "If anything, I had a Washington allergy. I always felt I was just camping out there."
When he came back to Maine, Pike served in the legislature, resisted temptation to seek the governorship and found pleasure in such pursuits as serving on the International Campobello Commission. Along with Sen. Edmund S. Muskie and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., he was appointed to the original Commission ten years ago.
Last December, physically restricted from traveling far from home, he tendered his resignation to President Ford. Somehow, the fact that he had resigned escaped public notice last winter. Curtis Hutchins, Chairman of the Board of Dead River Co., was named to fill the vacancy.
Sumner unfolded a letter from President Ford. "The Commission has benefited greatly from your experience and judgment and I am sure it will continue to benefit from your counsel as a neighbor and friend of the Park."
Of that, there can be no doubt. Sumner may not venture far from the old homestead but he has many ways to communicate his ideas, not the least of which is through his devoted brothers and his sisters who are all close enough to gather in the living room for "cocktails" every day at 5.
Sumner doesn't indulge any more but. he enjoys the fringe benefits.
We had the delightful experience of getting to know Radcliffe (Rad) Pike, roughly 72 and filled with the joy of living. Rad had just returned from London where he conferred with fellow naturalists and horticulturists. He is an adviser on landscaping at the University of New Hampshire and ranking authority on the flora and fauna of Washington County and nearby Campobello. Rad was executive secretary of the Park Commission, now serves as naturalist consultant.
Another brother, Moses Pike, at 78, still operates the most successful sardine and fish canneries in an area which has seen them go down the drain, one by one. He is active in business, loves ice fishing and hunting. Alger Pike, 78, is the gardener of the family, with a host of interests as varied as those of his brothers. Sister Marjorie (McCurdy) is 79 — "just a girl," says Rad.
When Rad is away, Linnea Calder comes in to cook the meals and keep an eye on things in the Lubec home. Mrs. Calder, who grew up in the Campobello world of the Roosevelts where her mother was the housekeeper, is practically a member of the Pike family.
Here at Passamaquoddy Bay, where the tides move quickly and more powerfully than anywhere in the world, we couldn't resist asking Sumner Pike about the energy that lies within reach. They've been talking about the Quoddy tidal power project since he was a young man. Did he think Quoddy would ever become a reality?
"We ought to keep it alive," he said, "but, no, I doubt if it will ever be built. With the cost of oil as high as it is, that helps the benefit-cost ratio of the project but, of course, you've got higher construction costs, too. And the impact on the fisheries is something that will concern Canada, perhaps now more than ever."
Rad Pike remarked later that his brother seemed a bit too pessimistic about Quoddy. Rad wouldn't write it off just yet.
The jury also still seems to be out on a refinery for the area — but the Pikes clearly would just as soon not see it come to their beloved Bay. Sumner is slightly amused with the heavy — almost complete — emphasis at environmental hearings on the impact of oil spills from such a project.
"The Pittston people would bring in Middle East oil for desulfurization. The refinery would emit a chemical which when mixed with the fogs around here would become sulfuric acid and that would be sprayed all over the countryside."
Rad Pike winced at the thought. He has found rare ferns and mosses, bushes and shrubs, blossoms and berries in the unique ecology of their homeland that would suffer possible extinction from the daily emissions of such a refinery.
And it comes as a disturbing thought also to a first time visitor who saw Spring come to the Nation's Capital a few weeks ago — but never with anything like the beauty of its arrival in Washington County. The clean, clear unspoiled grandeur of this garden spot is worthy of the dedication of its native sons and daughters — the Pikes and their neighbors and friends.
No wonder Sumner Pike never let Washington, D.C. get to him. He had Washington County to come back to — and preserve. Little wonder, too, that FDR shed a tear when he realized he could no longer sail these waters and tramp the woods, bogs and beaches of his "Beloved Island."
[From Maine Sunday Telegram, Sept. 7, 1975]
SUMMER PIKE
(By Don Larrabee)
WASHINGTON.— If you travel anywhere close to Lubec, as I did in August, you are drawn to the Pike place on Church Street. You seek out Sumner Pike, the patriarchal brother of one of the most remarkable families in Maine. And you quickly discover, or rediscover, why two Presidents — Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman — chose this seasoned "non-Party" Republican to work for them in the turbulent war years of the 1940's and the postwar recovery period.
I am not the first nor the last to go to the oracle of eastern Maine. Governor Longley and Senator Muskie stopped in on separate occasions last month. Rep. Cohen has done so and will again, before he decides whether to run for the Senate against Muskie.
It is a tribute to this quintessential man of learning, judgment and plain common sense that no one in public life can ignore him to this day — nor does anyone want to.
In 84 years, Sumner. Pike has lived wisely and well with Presidents and Kings. He has been an advisor to the barons of business and the gnomes of the New Deal.
Talk about power in. Washington? It is forgotten that this man from Maine set the prices of all energy, from sawdust to oil, during three critical war years. But he says he wouldn't take the job of energy czar today for a million bucks.
"At least I had some law to back me up then," he recalls. "Actually, I had more authority on that job (as director of fuel pricing for the OPA) than the President and the Congress together have been doing on this fuel price thing."
The man FDR asked to "come on down and help Leon out" (Leon Henderson, OPA director) surely must have been suspect in some quarters as a guardian of stable oil prices. Only a year or so earlier, he had been brought into the Commerce Department to write a pro-industry piece to counter or refute an impending Justice Department article cracking down on the "oil monopoly."
Sumner Pike doubled in brass: He was serving as a member of the Securities and Exchange Commission at the same time under one of the more curious of all FDR appointments.
"I firmly believe he had me mixed up with another Pike who once had been mildly cordial to him at a wedding attended almost unanimously by Republicans," he chuckled.
If FDR thought he was appointing cousin Carlton Pike of Nahant, Mass., the late President soon had no regrets when he discovered that his nominee was a native of Lubec, "just a hollering distance" from the Canadian Island of Campobello where FDR had his summer home.
Sumner must have regaled the President at some point with his contention that Lubec is the easternmost town in the United States. Scoffing at the claim of all Eastporters, Sumner defends his position by pointing to a "little nipple on Lubec Neck" that makes it a shade more easterly than Eastport.
When Pike went to the White House to talk SEC business, FDR "switched right over" to Campobello, Lubec and Eastport which dredged up memories of youthful romps on the Canadian Island before polio struck in 1921. (Pike was later to serve on the International Commission which created the Roosevelt Memorial Park where the family cottage and much more is being preserved.)
It wasn't long before FDR acquired such a fondness and respect for Pike that he asked him to handle the ticklish price setting job on wood, oil, coal and natural gas.
I wonder if the President had a method in his madness of appointing a Republican to the energy pricing job.
"No," said Sumner, "I think he had sort of given that Republican thing up. I felt on such matters that once you took the King's shilling, you went along with the thing rather than to try to throw rocks into the machinery. I know President Truman said the same thing."
Truman named him to the original Atomic Energy Commission and, in due course, Pike was to side with David Lilienthal against a crash program for developing the hydrogen or super bomb. They were overruled by the President.
Pike recalls now that he and Truman "sort of jibed" as individuals. They put political party behind them on the big decisions. The Maine man couldn't say as much for the controversial AEC chairman Lewis Strauss with whom he served.
"Strauss would never forget he was a wayback Republican," Sumner said. "That's one of the reasons I didn't have much use for Lewis. He would hamstring our jobs in the atomic energy thing in order to make a political point."
As we talked, the Pikes and their close friends were gathering for the daily (5 p.m.) cocktail hour. Brothers Rad and Alger were there. Linnea Calder, whose mother was the housekeeper for the Roosevelts. Harry Stevens, who runs the Roosevelt Park, and George McCurdy, husband of the Pike brothers' only sister, Marjorie.
The conversation inevitably turned back to the halcyon days of Lubec and Eastport. Roosevelt, he said, didn't like to see the area go downhill. Shipbuilding had stopped. The big timber had all been cut off. Wooden ships were becoming a thing of the past. The sardine factories closed (there were 15 at one time; now there are three).
Is there any Federal role to help out this good, but depressed, area of Maine? we asked.
"I've scratched my head a good deal and talked to a great many people. There have been a lot of ideas and I don't think any of them have been any good. I have certainly not had any," Sumner said, "but there may be something out in the bushes."
One possibility, he said, was the potential for oil and gas on Georges Bank. About the only thing that might help is a discovery on the outer continental shelf. It ought to be explored at least, he adds.
Will the Pittston refinery at Eastport go? "I would say no," Sumner replied.
Then, after a pause. "It seems to me foolish if these folks have gone this far without making a dicker with one of the Persian Gulf states to supply the oil. At the moment, since they've started this, the price of Persian Gulf oil has quadrupled or more and they have taken a pretty high and mighty attitude.
"I wouldn't be surprised if the Pittston people had somebody over there in either Saudi Arabia or Kuwait saying if they'll supply the oil, we'll put up a good deal of money for the refinery. That would be a very normal thing. I haven't heard a hint of it but it seems to me if a fellow was at all wise, he would be trying to arrange that right now.
"They've got plenty of money and don't know what the hell to do with it, except send some of their boys out to gambling casinos."
What about the impasse between the Congress and the White House over energy?
"I'm disturbed that they are not approaching it somewhat realistically. Of course, it's too late now to do any painless thing. So many people feel that if they look the other way, the whole thing will go away — but it won't. You could see it coming."
We went to Lubec and Campobello, for a second time this year, to learn more about the imprint FDR had made on the environs. It is substantial and it lives on, in the Campobello International Park and the fact that the Passamaquoddy Tidal Power Project, half a century later, continues to intrigue men of energy as it did Roosevelt.
We talked with Sumner Pike about Quoddy and the political shoals that have beset Dexter Cooper's dream from the beginning. That will be the subject of a subsequent column.