Trivia

U.S. senator from Missouri; term of service: 3 January 1953 - 27 December 1976 (resigned before term ended; was not a candidate for reelection in 1976).

First Secretary of the Air Force, 1947-1950.

Chairman of National Security Resources Board. 1950-1951.

Administrator of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, 1951-1952.

Interred in a crypt in Washington National Cathedral, Washington, D.C.

Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume Two, 1986-1990, pages 820-822. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1999.

His son James Wadsworth Symington served as Democratic U.S. Representative from Missouri, 1969-1977.

His father in law James W. Wadsworth, Jr. served as Republican U.S. Senator from New York 1915-1927, and as Republican U.S. Representative from New York, 1933-1951.

Symington was a long time friend of Bob Hope, who he first met during the 1948 "Christmas Caravan" for the air crews of the Berlin Airlift. Symington and Hope shared a passion for golf. In the U.S. Senate Symington introduced a resolution (P.L. 87-478, 76 Stat. 93) approved on June 8, 1962 awarding a Congressional Gold Medal to Hope "in recognition of his having rendered outstanding service to the cause of democracies throughout the world."

Accepting the medal at a White House ceremony on September 11, 1963, Hope said, "I want to thank the Defense Department, and especially Stuart Symington who started all our Christmas trips and has been more or less a den mother to all of us all these years.".

Cousin of Fife Symington.