Talk:Norman Clapp

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Norman Clapp held a high office in Wisconsin, Lt Gov, I believe. He was head of REA in two administrations. This redirect should be removed.

Norman M. Clapp, 83, Leader In Electrifying of Rural Areas By WOLFGANG SAXON Published: October 18, 1998

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Norman Moses Clapp, a Government official from Wisconsin who led the Rural Electrification Administration under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson and who directed New York State's investigation of the disastrous power blackout of July 1977, died on Oct. 7 at his home in Clearwater, Fla., where he was living in retirement. He was 83.

Mr. Clapp, a native of Ellsworth, Wis., and a 1937 Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Lawrence University, then Lawrence College, in Appleton, Wis., spent more than 40 years in public life. He earned his spurs as a staff assistant to Senator Robert M. La Follette Jr., the Wisconsin Progressive who fought for the electrification administration and similar far-reaching New Deal measures.

Mr. Clapp served the Senator from 1935 to 1942, with time out as an investigator and mediator for the Wisconsin Labor Relations Board and its national equivalent in Washington. He stayed in the capital as a financial expert on the Senate staff until 1944, when he bought into and edited the first of two regional Wisconsin weekly newspapers in which he had an ownership interest.

A delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1956, he ran for Congress that year and sold the papers in 1958 to run once more full time. But his district was a Republican stronghold, and he lost on his final try in 1960 despite a campaign appearance by Senator John F. Kennedy.

Once Kennedy was President, he chose Mr. Clapp to revive the electrification administration and its low-cost loan programs to combat rural poverty. Technological progress was making American agriculture the envy of the world, but it also idled hundreds of thousands of farmers and farm hands.

The Kennedy approach, continued under President Johnson, tried to give farmers a new livelihood by providing power stations and transmission lines through rural cooperatives. For eight years, Mr. Clapp conducted the program as it expanded to bring telephone service to rural America, battling stiff opposition from private utilities and their advocates in Washington.

Mr. Clapp returned to his home state to serve as a commissioner and then chairman of the Wisconsin Public Service Commission. He was vice president for energy in a New York consulting firm when the blackout threw the New York City area into chaos on July 13, 1977.

Hundreds of stores were damaged or destroyed by looting and vandalism, chiefly in Brooklyn and the Bronx, where many merchants were without insurance. The breakdown and lack of preparedness led to several investigations, and Gov. Hugh L. Carey appointed Mr. Clapp to conduct the official inquiry for the state's Public Service Commission.

The resulting report found fault with several agencies and power companies, including the Consolidated Edison Company, the surrounding utilities, the state power pool and the Public Service Commission itself. The report cited poor planning, design, maintenance and emergency procedures that, Con Edison engineers testified, could cope with slowly developing problems but were useless in an emergency of such magnitude.

Mr. Clapp is survived by his wife of 62 years, Analoyce Elkington Clapp; three sons, David A. of Bloomington, Minn., William E. of Dresden, Germany, and Douglas E. of Alexandria, Va., and seven grandchildren. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.165.174.129 (talk) 04:41, 11 March 2010 (UTC)