"Florida Senator" Spessard Holland Hand Signed FDC Dated 1945 Todd Mueller COA

Up for auction “Florida Senator” Spessard Holland Hand Signed First Day Cover Dated 1945.
This item is certified authentic by Todd Mueller Autographs and
comes with their Certificate of Authenticity.
ES-3774D
Spessard Lindsey Holland (July 10, 1892 – November 6, 1971) was an American lawyer and politician. He served as the 28th Governor of Florida from 1941 to 1945, and as a United States Senator from Florida from 1946 to 1971. A Democrat, he was a member of the conservative coalition in Congress. Holland was born in Bartow, Florida, the son of Benjamin Franklin and Virginia Spessard Holland, a teacher. He attended public schools, entering the Summerlin Institute (now Bartow High School) in 1909. Holland graduated magna cum laude from Emory College (currently Emory University) in 1912, where he was a member of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity. Holland would go on to teach high school in Warrenton, Georgia for four years. In 1916, Holland began attending law school at the University of Florida. There he taught in the “sub-freshman department” (high school) of the university. He also became the first elected student body president and a member of the debating society. During his time at Emory and UF, he participated in track and field, football, basketball, and baseball; on one occasion, he played so well as a pitcher in an exhibition game against the Philadelphia Athletics that Connie Mack (the grandfather of Connie Mack III, who would one day hold the Senate seat Holland once occupied) offered him a contract (he declined). Holland qualified to be a Rhodes Scholar, and was already a junior partner with R.B. Huffaker in the Huffaker & Holland law firm, but his plans were interrupted by World War I. Holland volunteered for service and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Coast Artillery Corps, where he was transferred to France and served in the brigade’s JAG Corps as an assistant adjutant. At his request, Holland was later transferred to the 24th Aero Squadron, Signal Corps of the Army Air Corps. Here he served with Lt. George E. Goldwaithe as a gunner and aerial observer, gathering information and taking photographs in reconnaissance missions behind enemy lines. At various times he took part in battles at Meuse-Argonne, Champagne, St. Mihiel, and Lunéville, where he downed two enemy planes. On one mission, Holland’s plane crash-landed in a crater; on December 11, 1918, Holland was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. The citation, signed by John J. Pershing, noted: First Lieutenant Spessard L. Holland, C.A.C. Observer 24th, Aero Squadron, distinguished himself by extra-ordinary heroism in connection with military operations against an armed enemy of the United States at Bois de Banthville, France, on October 15, 1918 and in recognition of his gallant conduct I have awarded him in the name of the President the Distinguished Service Cross.” Upon resigning his commission in July 1919, Holland was promoted to captain. Once back in the U.S., he toured for the Victory Loan Drive and resumed his law practice in Bartow. On September 25, 1946 Holland assumed the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Charles O. Andrews, who had died a week earlier. In November 1946 he defeated Republican J. Harry Schad to win a full six-year term. Re-elected in 1952, he, along with all other senators from the former Confederate states (except Lyndon B. Johnson, Estes Kefauver, and Albert Gore, Sr.), signed the 1956 “Southern Manifesto”, which condemned the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), declaring that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional, and promised to resist its implementation. Up for re-election in 1958, Holland was challenged by former U.S. Senator (and later U.S. Representative) Claude Pepper in the Democratic primary. After fending off Pepper’s challenge, he easily defeated his Republican opponent, Leland Hyzer, in November to win a third term. During the 87th Congress Holland introduced a constitutional amendment prohibiting states from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a poll tax or other types of tax. Approved by both Houses of Congress in August 1962, the amendment was quickly ratified by the required three-fourths of the states (38), and in January 1964 became the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. He won a fourth term in 1964, this time defeating Republican Claude R. Kirk, Jr.. Then, in November 1969, at the age of 77, Holland announced that he would not seek re-election in 1970. He actively campaigned for Democrat Lawton Chiles, who defeated U.S. Representative William C. Cramer in the November 1970 election. Cramer had the endorsement of U.S. President Richard Nixon, and had handily defeated G. Harrold Carswell (whom Nixon had earlier nominated unsuccessfully to the United States Supreme Court) in the Republican primary. Chiles boasted that Cramer could bring “Nixon, Agnew, Reagan, and anybody else he wants. … I’ll take Holland on my side against all of them.”