Announcer: Idaho Experience is made possible with funding from the James and Barbara Cimino Foundation and Anne Voilleque and Louise Nelson, Judy and Steve Meyer.

With additional support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and contributions to the Friends of Idaho Public Television and viewers like you.

Thank you.

Narrator: What if Idaho had a Mount Rushmore, honoring the state's greatest elected leaders?

Congressman Mike Simpson: There's really four what I would call iconic political figures in Idaho.

And, surprisingly, two of them are Democrats, two of them are Republicans.

I think most people would be able to name them: William Borah.

Frank Church.

Jim McClure.

Cecil Andrus.

Narrator: Many Idahoans wouldn't recognize the face of Jim McClure, even though he was one of the most powerful members in the U.S. Senate.

And even at his most influential, he preferred to stay out of the limelight.

When disaster struck, Jim McClure would put on his work jeans.

Debbie Field, McClure Staffer: No announcements, no fanfare.

Just said, "Where can you put me to work?"

Ken McClure, Senator's Son: There's two kinds of senators.

One kind is the senator that always stands in front of the camera.

And the other one is in the background, reading the material, learning the job, doing the work.

And Dad was very much of that.

Paula Forney, McClure Staffer: A very gracious, humble man, but very intelligent, very thoughtful, very thorough.

You know, he was true to himself and to his family and to the people of Idaho.

[MUSIC] Jim McClure: I was born in Payette.

We lived on what most people in Payette would say was the wrong side of the tracks.

Narrator: Jim McClure was born in 1924.

His maternal grandparents were teachers, before his grandfather became a lawyer and a legislator.

His paternal grandparents came to Idaho from Missouri and bought a small ranch near Council.

His father and mother both graduated from the University of Idaho.

Jim McClure: We had a little acreage and kept a cow and chickens and grew a big garden, like most people did during the Depression years.

Marilyn McClure Roach, Senator's Daughter: He spent his summers with his grandparents, and that was really formative.

And I think the work ethic that his grandpa gave him really stood in good stead.

Narrator: The gangly 6-footer performed in two school bands and two choirs, played tennis, was in the Latin and camera clubs and Hi-Y, acted and edited the yearbook.

Roach: He definitely was about the duty.

If you could do it, you did it, and didn't make a fuss about it.

Narrator: In 1942 a day before h birthday, McClure enlisted in the Navy.

He trained as a pilot stateside, but never left the U.S. His brother Raymond served in the South Pacific.

Brother Bob died in flight training shortly before the end of World War II.

Roach: The plane crashed and he was the only one on board who died.

The oldest brother, first son.

My grandmother, at least, never got over it really.

Jim McClure: My mother was a very strong-willed person, a very strongly religious person, and she, throughout all her life, knew that there were values that were worth dying for as well as worth living by.

And we felt that way about the war.

Narrator: After the war, McClure enrolled at U of I's law school.

And, fatefully, he joined the Vandaleers, a celebrated choral group.

McClure sang bass and met a freshman soprano from Nezperce, Louise Miller.

[MUSIC] Roach: She was the star in college, the soloist for the Vandaleers.

She loved the stage.

He didn't.

Narrator: On Valentine's Day in 1950, on the hill by the U of I water tank, Jim proposed.

He paid for the ring with his Navy separation bonus.

They married in September.

Their partnership lasted 61 years.

The couple bought a small house with fruit trees and a vegetable garden in Payette, and Jim joined his father and grandfather in the Payette law firm.

In 1950 he won his first election - unopposed as prosecuting attorney.

Daughter Marilyn came in 1952, followed by Ken and Dave.

In 1960, Jim challenged a hard-drinking incumbent state senator in the Republican primary.

Payette wasn't a dry town, officially.

But people frowned on drinking.

Ken McClure: And Dad thought that it would be better served by somebody who had the values that most people in town had.

It was just that simple.

Narrator: He won easily and joined the 1961 Idaho Senate, a body that included future governors Cecil Andrus and Don Samuelson.

Ever diligent, McClure did what few lawmakers do: He read all the bills, about 500 per session.

But after six years, Jim was ready to return full-time to his law practice.

Roach: He thought, "OK, I'm done with this.

I've done what I need to do.

I'm out of here.

I'll just stay home, raise my kids, remodel the house."

And then the candidate, Mattmiller, died in a plane crash.

Jim McClure: I thought the First District Congress had changed and that a Republican could win that race.

Roach: It was a family affair.

We all went out campaigning, piled in the car.

Our job was to help hand out the leaflets and the posters.

So we had to, in the car, memorize all the counties in the First District, in order, so when we were in a parking lot we wouldn't waste fliers on cars from the Second District.

Adams, Bannock, Bear Lake, Benewah et cetera.

Narrator: The candidate wasn't exactly a happy warrior, but his wife was a star campaigner.

Ken McClure: Mom was very social, and Dad was reserved.

She loved being with people.

And the campaigning element was second nature to her.

Narrator: At the Methodist church in Payette, Louise led the choir and enjoyed the socializing.

Roach: As soon as the service was over, Dad was out and in the car.

But after he'd started campaigning and getting to know people around the state, it started shifting.

I can't tell you how long it was, but pretty soon we'd be out in the car going, "Where's your Dad?"

Simpson: I will tell you that his greatest strength was probably Louise.

Nobody could do one of these jobs without the full support of your wife, or your spouse.

Roach: Neither one of them would have come as far without the other, because they had very different strengths to bring.

Dad would be very thoughtful and substantive, and Mom would be shaking hands and visiting or occasionally taking somebody aside and reading them the Riot Act.

Narrator: After winning election to Congress in 1966, the McClures moved to Washington, D.C., enrolling Marilyn, Ken and Dave in school in Arlington, Virginia.

The demand for exacting work and expertise ramped up, especially for staffers who had to brief the congressman.

Forney: The Senator appreciated the briefing, but the Senator always had one or two questions that a staff member hadn't thought of.

Jeff Celik, McClure staffer: We'd hang out outside and wait to see what happens.

And they'd come out sweating.

He was scary smart and knew the rules.

And he learned all the rules inside and out.

[MUSIC] Narrator: As a member of the House for six years, McClure insisted on reading and personally signing every letter, when most members of Congress relied on staff to read the mail and a machine to sign letters.

Bill Smallwood, McClure Biographer: He didn't want to appear as a phony.

He wanted to be himself.

And he was so afraid that somebody he had met and talked to would send a letter in and a form letter would go out to them and he couldn't stand that.

He drove the staff crazy.

Jim McClure: I did, I read every letter that came in, and to the best of my knowledge, I signed every letter that went out.

When I got to the Senate, the correspondence is just so overwhelming that I couldn't do it that way anymore.

Smallwood: But he tried to do it.

Jim McClure: I tried for a short while.

Narrator: The triumph of his House years was winning protection for the Stanley Basin and the Sawtooth and White Cloud Mountains.

McClure and other key Idaho leaders — Gov.

Cecil Andrus, Senators Frank Church and Len Jordan, and Congressman Orval Hansen opposed national park designation.

Instead, they proposed a new idea, a more flexible National Recreation Area.

Hansen credited McClure for bringing a bipartisan group from an Interior subcommittee to Sun Valley in 1971 for a hearing and a helicopter trip into the Sawtooths.

Congressman Orval Hansen: And he joined my bill, joined as a cosponsor of my bill.

When he finally did that and told the chairman, "We'd like to have hearings and move this forward."

That's what did it.

Jim McClure: If there's any place that's more outstanding than it, I don't know where it would be.

So the argument really wasn't whether it ought to be preserved.

It was a question of how to do it And so I worked ver hard to get this rather unique new idea put into law so that the Sawtooth Valley wouldn't be covered with subdivisions from Galena Summit to Stanley.

And, fortunately, the law has worked.

Narrator: Meanwhile, McClure set about making himself an expert on energy policy.

Troubled by U.S. reliance on imported oil, he invented the House Republican Task Force on Energy, chairing hearings in 1971 and '72.

He drove electric cars and bought an electric campaign van.

Ken McClure: Nobody else said, "Hey, we got to do this."

Dad did it.

He saw the world, he saw a problem he could identify, and nobody else was working on it.

Narrator: Soon after he entered the Senate in January 1973, the Yom Kippur War broke out.

Middle East oil producers imposed an embargo in retaliation for U.S. support of Israel.

The result: Spiking fuel prices, gas lines and a recession.

That same year, McClure became the first member of Congress to visit the region, and returned to the Middle East at least a half-dozen times.

In the Senate, he chaired the powerful Energy Committee for six years.

Jim McClure: Nations go to war when their survival is threatened.

Our survival can be threatened by overseas events in the field of energy production.

And so I think we must look at energy production in this country in terms of our ability to reduce the threats to our peace and security because of events that happen in other countries.

George Mitchell, Former Senate Majority Leader: The Senate has had no more ardent or consistent advocate of a national energy policy than Jim McClure.

Events in the Persian Gulf today vindicate that long view.

[MUSIC] Narrator: McClure used his power as committee chairman and senior member of the Appropriations Committee to shift the Department of Energy's battery research from California to Idaho.

Paul Menser, Idaho National Laboratory: Sen. McClure was a very enthusiastic proponent of electric vehicles.

We're talking about in the 1970s.

And this was before lithium-ion batteries and anything like that.

He drove one to work.

It's turned into a very big piece of business for the lab.

Narrator: Congressman Mike Simpson now chairs the House Appropriations Subcommittee Overseeing INL, which still brings billions of dollars to Idaho for research on energy, nuclear power and cyber security.

Simpson: Jim was the first one to really focus a lot of attention on the Idaho National Lab.

And so, it's been one of the things I'm proudest of is continuing the tradition we have of supporting the Idaho National Lab.

Narrator: McClure loved puttering: plumbing, electrical, bedrooms, bathrooms, irrigation, fruit trees, vegetables, carpentry, flooring, cleaning gutters.

He did it all.

Roach: Mom said she never lived in a completely finished house.

He loved to work with his hands, and that was a real release for him.

The hunting, fishing, hiking, we didn't need trails.

He would just go, "Oh, I think it's over there.

See, it must be that direction."

And so we trot up the mountain.

Narrator: The do-it-yourself ethic included cars.

His old Mustang's gearshift knob was a screwdriver.

And he insisted on changing flat tires, even wearing his suit on the way to a speaking engagement.

Ken McClure: And that drove his approach to lots of governance issues.

Why is it that government needs to do this for us when we're capable of doing it ourselves?

He would want to be thought of as just like his constituents.

Not different.

Not above them.

So, it's not unlike him at all to be sitting in a tire store, wearing a John Deere cap and doing his work while all the other guys were reading Sports Illustrated or Car and Driver, and he was preparing for SALT negotiations.

That's just who he was.

Narrator: McClure may have been a leader in the SALT nuclear arms negotiations, but to the people in Idaho, he was the salt of the earth.

He won elections by increasingly large margins.

Among the tools McClure employed was a 30-year-old bus.

In his final campaign, that bus made 204 stops in three weeks.

Forney: I think the value was to get out through the state and get the senator in front of Idahoans, the real Idahoans.

I think people appreciated it.

Narrator: Debbie Field volunteered to help after the collapse of the Teton Dam in 1976 that killed 11 people and left a 2-billion-dollar swath of damage through Eastern Idaho.

The senator showed up in his work jeans.

Field: No announcements, no fanfare.

Just said, "Where can you put me to work?"

And I said, "Who is that guy?

I'd love to work for that guy."

Narrator: McClure handed the premier tax-cutting spotlight to a colleague, to improve the bill's chances.

That's why one of the biggest tax cuts in history is remembered as Kemp-Roth, not Kemp-McClure.

Jim McClure: I was constantly in touch with President Reagan.

I was chairman of the Republican Conference in the Senate at the time he was president.

[Meeting conversation] Narrator: McClure made weekly trips to the White House, but avoided the reporters wanting to know the president's mind.

He also left his mark on crucial legislation for Idaho: Reintroducing wolves; protecting wilderness, salmon, Hells Canyon, City of Rocks, Hagerman Fossil Beds and the Henry's Fork; building bike trails in North Idaho; and easing restrictions on gun and ammo sales.

He secured money for Mountain Home Air Force Base, American Falls Dam and forest roads, and for fighting fires and managing wild horses.

Field: He really fought hard for the people in our state to get what they needed.

Maybe not what they wanted, but he made sure they got what they needed.

Narrator: As a fiscal conservative, McClure was sometimes criticized for his home-state spending.

In a massive 1987 bill, he slipped in $6.4 million to build North America's longest gondola for the ski resort in Kellogg.

The Reagan Administration considered cutting the money, but backed down.

McClure: It is heartwarming today to see what a difference that's made to that community.

And I am not ashamed of what I did.

Narrator: Through it all was the partnership with Louise.

The couple that met as singers at the U of I became powerful national advocates for the arts.

Mark Hofflund, Idaho Shakespeare Festival: Their marriage and partnership began in the arts.

Their marriage and partnership lasted decades.

And as is true with most original creations, you don't know what you're creating at the time.

Narrator: Jim McClure sat on the boards of both the Kennedy Center for the Arts and the Smithsonian.

At Louise McClure's urging, the Smithsonian staged an exhibit for works by Idaho artists in 1983-84.

When a scandal over sacrilegious art threatened the National Endowment for the Arts, Louise McClure went to Sen. Jesse Helms, who was urging his Senate colleagues to stop funding for the NEA.

Hofflund: Jesse Helms showing the pictures in the cloak room immediately got the reaction he was looking for.

Ken McClure: Jesse Helms had this budget item in his crosshairs.

It was all but done.

And she was able to cajole him, to give it a couple more years, to see if they could turn it around.

Because Helms, gentleman from North Carolina, very conservative, could not look Mom in the eye and say, "I don't care."

Narrator: President George H.W.

Bush appointed Louise to a six-year term on the National Council of the Arts.

George Bush and Jim McClure came to Congress together in 1967.

Barbara Bush and Louise were especially close.

Barbara Bush spoke at the McClures' farewell gala in 1990, reminiscing about the group formed by 11 women whose husbands came to Washington in the 1960s.

Barbara Bush, First Lady: Louise McClure is our leader.

She's candid, forthright, caring, wise, funny, and truly a great friend.

Narrator: In 1991, Jim opened a Washington lobbying firm with two former staffers and joined his son's Boise law firm.

The McClures focused much of their time on the university they loved, supporting the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival and endowing the James A. and Louise McClure Center for Public Policy in Boise.

One program brings student reporters to cover the Idaho Legislature for small-town newspapers.

Katherine Himes, McClure Center Director: They're actually members of the press.

And they're covering what happens in the state Legislature for rural newspapers around Idaho that just aren't able to have a reporter come to the Capitol.

Narrator: A new building housing the College of Mines and Earth Resources was named McClure hall.

[Sounds of Conversation] Narrator: At the 1992 groundbreaking, McClure reflected on his family's connection to the university.

Jim McClure: My Dad was a student here, whose education was interrupted in World War I. I was a student here and my education was interrupted by World War II.

My older brother graduated just in time to go into the Navy, where he lost his life in World War II.

Another brother was in the School of Agriculture here.

We have two sons who graduated from the University of Idaho.

Ken McClure: Their relationship with the University was the last one, and they wanted to keep it.

They didn't want to let it go.

Narrator: Jim died in 2011.

Louise lived another decade, dying at 93 in 2021.

Roach: I think they were proud of each other.

She thought he was the best man ever.

And he knew where her strengths were, too.

Narrator: In retirement, the McClures traveled to Washington to see their cherished choral group the Vandaleers perform at the Kennedy Center.

[Performance of "And Here We Have Idaho"] [MUSIC] Announcer: Idaho Experience is made possible with funding from the James and Barbara Cimino Foundation and Anne Voilleque and Louise Nelson, Judy and Steve Meyer.

With additional support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and contributions to the Friends of Idaho Public Television and viewers like you.

Thank you.