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Lester Callaway "Buddy" Hunt, Jr. (September 5, 1927 - January 6, 2020) spent his adult life advocating for the rights of working people. He started his career as a community organizer for Saul Alinsky and then became a community college professor teaching labor history to working class students in night school. In later years, he volunteered as a companion to people with AIDS, as a life choice advocate for the Hemlock Society, and as a listener for the Samaritan Suicide Hotline.
Lester Jr., known as "Buddy", was born in 1927 in Lander, Wyoming. He was the son of Senator Lester C. Hunt and Emily Higby. Buddy attended the University of Wyoming and then transferred to Swarthmore College, graduating in 1949. Later, he attended and was the president of the student body at the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. On June 9, 1953, as a 24-year-old, he was arrested in Washington, D.C., for soliciting prostitution from a male undercover police officer in Lafayette Square, just north of and adjacent to the White House property. It was his first offense, which police normally handled quietly as a matter for the offender's family to address, but the arrest became known to Senate Republicans. Senators Styles Bridges and Herman Welker threatened that if Senator Lester Hunt Sr. did not immediately retire from the Senate and agree not to seek his seat in the 1954 election, they would see that Buddy was prosecuted and would widely publicize his arrest. In a closely divided Senate, Hunt's resignation would have allowed Wyoming's Republican governor to appoint a Republican to fill the remainder of Hunt's term and to run as an incumbent in the 1954 election, possibly affecting the balance of power in the Senate in favor of Republicans. Hunt refused, and in response, Republican Senators threatened Inspector Roy Blick of the Morals Division of the Washington Police Department with the loss of his job for failing to prosecute Buddy Hunt. Buddy Hunt was prosecuted on October 7, 1953. He paid a fine for soliciting a plainclothes policeman "for lewd and immoral purposes", and on the same day, the Washington Post published the story. Buddy Hunt's attorney was quoted in an October 8 New York Times account as saying his client preferred "to avoid any further publicity." Despite these brief media accounts, the arrest and prosecution of Buddy Hunt was not widely publicized at the time. In December 1953, Senator Lester Hunt Sr. told journalist Pearson that he would not stand for re-election if the opposition used his Buddy's arrest against him, fearing that the publicity would have a negative effect on his wife's health. Despite the threats of publicity from his political opponents, including a specific threat to distribute in Wyoming 25,000 leaflets about his son's arrest, Hunt did announce on April 15, 1954, that he would be a candidate for re-election. In May 1954, as a member of the Senate's "liberal bloc", Senator Lester Hunt Sr. proposed rules for Senate committees designed to eliminate some of Senator McCarthy's tactics. Later that same month, Senator Bridges renewed his threat to publicize Hunt Jr.'s offense to Wyoming voters. On June 19, 1954, Senator Hunt shot himself at his desk in his Senate office, using a rifle he apparently brought from home, and died a few hours later in Casualty Hospital. Just one day before Hunt's suicide, Senator McCarthy had accused an unnamed Senator of "just plain wrong doing". Buddy's politics were more liberal than his father's and he had participated in campaigns against McCarthyism and in support of academic freedom. Commenting on his arrest in 1989, he said "I wasn't framed. I guess technically it was entrapment, but I was ready for the trap."
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