trb@drutx.UUCP (BuckleyTR) (01/09/85)
From the Rocky Mountain News, Tuesday, January 8, 1984:
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WINCHESTER, Mass (UPI) - Robert Welch, who founded the fiercely anti-
communist and ultra-conservative John Birch Society, died Sunday in a
nursing home, the society said. He was 85.
Welch founded the society in December 1958 in Indianapolis
because of concern for "communism engulfing the world," the group said
in a statement Monday announcing his death.
Welch suffered a stroke in December 1983, shortly after stepping
down as leader of the group based in Belmont, Mass.
Welch, born in Chowan County, N.C., graduated from the University
of North Carolina and attended the Naval Academy and Harvard Law
School. He went on to become a vice president of the Welch Candy Co.
of Cambridge, Mass., known for the candies Sugar Daddy and Sugar
Babies.
He left the law school in the middle of his third and final year
"in disgust over what Felix Frankfurter was teaching - that labor and
management were enemies," said society spokesman John McManus.
Frankfurter, later a Supreme Court justice, was a Harvard Law
School professor.
Welch's early mission, the society said, "was to create greater
public awareness and understanding of the dangers of all forms of
governmental collectivism - whether it be communism, socialism,
Naziism or welfare statism."
He campaigned in the Massachusetts Republican primary for
lieutenant governor in 1950 and by 1957 had devoted himself to combat
"socialist tenants infecting American society," the group said.
In 1958, he launched the publication One Man's Opinion, which
later became American Opinion.
The resident of Belmont, Mass., started the John Birch Society at
a meeting Dec. 8 and 9, 1958, in Indianapolis after defining communism
as the "Big Lie."
"We believe that if all the pseudo-statesmen and cheery diplomats
of this Earth would stop lying, if somehow they could be compelled to
speak the truth and only the truth in all their utterances, than one-
half of the unsolved problems (of) this planet would immediately
disappear," he once wrote.
Welch was a controversial figure for 25 years, until stepping
down as leader of the John Birch Society and all its affiliates in
March 1983.
His last public appearance was at the society's 25th anniversary
celebration in Indianapolis in December 1983.
Funeral services will be private with a memorial service planned
for a later date in the Boston area. Welch is survived by his wife,
Marian, sons Hillard and Robert III and six grandchildren.
*****************
Tom Buckley
AT&T Information Systems
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