Photograph by Kevin A. Roberts
Everyone knows of Rush Limbaugh III, “the mouth that roared,” but his grandfather, lawyer Rush Limbaugh Sr., cut an entirely different swath through life. He was a Missouri courtroom legend, and by all accounts, a beacon of integrity. In a new biography titled The Original Rush Limbaugh, legal historian Dennis Boman tells the story of the controversial radio host’s namesake.
People have heard of Rush Limbaugh, but not necessarily his grandfather, another influential man named Rush Limbaugh.
I became very intrigued when I found out Rush Limbaugh the First was very involved in civil liberties issues in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and that’s very unexpected to learn about someone named Rush Limbaugh. They’re two very different people. He’s very different from his grandson, who was named after him. There are no skeletons, as far as I can tell, in this Rush’s closet. He was very committed to his community and to philanthropy. He wasn’t a partisan in the sense that we know today, he was someone interested in consensus and compromise, unlike his grandson. A lot of people said he was one of the most brilliant and congenial and humble people they had ever known. So he was the complete opposite to Rush the Third in some ways.
Tell me about the 1935 kidnapping case Ware vs. Muench that caused national headlines and involved Rush I.
A young woman, Anna Ware, was having a child out of wedlock, which was considered very shameful back then. She came from Philadelphia to St. Louis, where she was promised there would be somebody to help her pay for the expenses of having the child. She came out here and she found the people were really not going to help her, but that they were very shady -- the Muenches. Nellie Muench had been tried previously for masterminding the kidnapping of a St. Louis doctor. Ware wound up having to sue to get her child back from the Muenches. The Muenches claimed said the child wasn’t hers; they were lying. Rush was appointed by the St. Louis Court of Appeals to be a special commissioner, basically a judge, so he presided over the case. He wrote the decision awarding the child to Anna Ware, and it was a very popular decision. It had been a sensational trial, with people clamoring to be inside the courtroom.
You wrote about how Rush the First managed the impeachment trial of Missouri State Treasurer Larry Brunk in 1931.
State Treasurer Larry Brunk was using his office to line his and his friends’ pockets. They guy was fairly crooked, but he wasn’t convicted because many of his friends were in the state senate, and they weren’t going to impeach him, regardless of the evidence. Rush the First learned about the underpayments of the interest on state bonds owed to the state by banks, and the pocketing of the money, so he headed an investigation. He believed very strongly in the transparency of government.
Can you see some personality traits having been passed on from Rush I to Rush III?
There are certain talents, probably, that Rush the Third has that his grandfather handed down to him—the fluency of speech, the ability to make an argument, and an astonishing ability to recall small details in memory.
Do you know what Rush I thought of Rush III and his radio career?
Rush the First didn’t have time to listen to Rush the Third because he was too busy with his legal career. He had clients relying on him even when he was in his 90s. He worked as long as he could, ‘til age 102 or 103, when he was even then working six-hour days. He would take a nap in the afternoon. According to the family, Rush the First was someone whose mind never left him. He passed at age 104, in 1996.
Didn’t Rush I play a part in the controversy over erecting a statue to Rush III at the Missouri State Capitol in Jefferson City?
There was somebody who suggested that the best way to end the controversy was to put a statue of Rush the First in there instead. And I think he deserves a spot in the Missouri Hall of Fame. I’m not saying Rush the Third doesn’t, but the first Rush never liked attention and a lot of awards. He got lots of them at the end of his life, though. They named the federal courthouse in Cape Girardeau after him, and he would have thought that was over the top.
