Charles Evans Whittaker
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Charles Evans Whittaker (February 22, 1901 – November 26, 1973) was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1957 to 1962.
He was born on a farm near Troy, Kansas and attended school until he dropped out in the ninth grade. He spent the next two years hunting, trapping, and farming, but developed an interest in law by reading newspaper articles about criminal trials. He applied to the Kansas City School of Law (currently the University of Missouri - Kansas City School of Law) and gained admission with the condition that he first acquire a high school education. He spent two years working, and taking high school courses from a private tutor before enrolling. While he was a student at the school, from 1922-1924, Harry S. Truman was a classmate of his. He received his law degree in 1924.
He joined a law firm in Kansas City, Missouri and built up a practice in corporate law. He had close ties to the Republican party. This led to his first appointment as a judge on the US District Court for the western division of Missouri on July 8, 1954. He then was nominated to the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit on June 5, 1956. Less than a year later he was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. He retired from the court in 1962 citing exhaustion from the workload.
He died in 1973 at St. Luke's Hospital in Kansas City of a ruptured abdominal aneurism. He was survived by a wife, Winifred, and three sons, C. Keither, Kent C and Gary T.
Sources
- Former Justice Whittaker of Supreme Court is dead, New York Times, November 27, 1973.
| Preceded by: Stanley Forman Reed | Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States March 25, 1957 – March 31, 1962 | Succeeded by: Byron White |