era of direct election of senators. That senate class (number 1, as it turns out) brought to Washington some of the best-known Democrats of the next generation: Edmund Muskie of Maine, Thomas Dodd of Connecticut, Philip Hart of Michigan, Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota and Robert Byrd of West Virginia.
Remarkably, three of the young soldiers who were treated at Percy Jones Army Hospital in Battle Creek, Mich. Inouye, Robert Dole of Kansas, and Philip Hart of Michigan would serve with distinction in the U.S. Senate. Inouye liked to say that it was Dole, who would become the Republican maj