By Mark Rhoads
The man on the right standing next to President Calvin Coolidge is Vice President Charles G. Dawes from Evanston who served from 1925 to 1929. He was one of two Vice Presidents of the United States from Illinois. The other was Vice President Adlai Ewing Stevenson from Bloomington who served with President Grover Cleveland from 1893 to 1897. Almost no students in Illinois today have ever heard of Dawes nor have their teachers.
Dawes was a business leader and banker in Chicago and an outstanding but quiet Illinoisan. He shared the 1925 Nobel Peace Prize with Sir Austen Chamberlain of England for inventing The Dawes Plan to stabilize currencies in Europe after World War I. He was first Comptroller of the Currency, a general and top logistics aide to Gen. Black Jack Pershing in World War I, and US Ambassador to England 1929-1933.
Dawes was one of those who helped persuade President Herbert Hoover that Chicago business leaders needed help, a special task force of Treasury agents later called The Untouchables, to prosecute Al Capone for income tax evasion. Business leaders, called The Secret Six, were horrified that the image of Chicago after the St. Valentine's Day Massacre of 1929 would kill chances for decent families to want to come to the World's Fair they were planning for 1933. Eventually, more than 48 million visitors came over two years and the fair returned a profit to Chicago even during the Depression. Rufus Dawes, one of several brothers of Charles, was president of the fair and another brother William Dawes was President of the Chicago Chamber of Commerce.
The Dawes brothers of Chicago were great grandsons of William Dawes who also rode to spread the alarm that British regulars were on the march on the same night as Paul Revere on April 18, 1775. If all that were not enough, very late in his life a man came to Evanston to ask Charles Dawes if he could add lyrics to a short piano composition in A minor Dawes had written in 1912. The lyricist was Carl Sigman and the song now with words was called "Its All in the Game." It was a hit on Your Hit Parade after Dawes died in 1951, again in 1958, and still again a third time in 1970 when it was recorded by Elton John. The home of Mr. Dawes is now a registered historical site and museum in Evanston.
Gharles Gates Dawes is yet another "famous" Illinoisan you likely never heard of. For all of his many accomplishments in buisness, banking, and public service, Dawes understood well the story that Harry Truman's vice president, Alben Barkley, always loved to tell. "A woman had two sons. One went off to sea, the other became Vice President of the United States. Neither one was ever heard from again."
