Considerable attention was focused on Cooperstown when in 1925 Gerald P. Nye, then editor of Griggs County Sentinel-Courier, was appointed to the United States Senate to fill the unexpired term of the (ate Dr. Edward S. Ladd.

Nye, a son of Irvin R. Nye, a prominent newspaper man in Wisconsin, came to Cooperstown in 1919 when the local newspaper was purchased by a farmers' organization.

Senator Nye was born in Hortonville, Wisconsin and completed graduation from high school at Whittenberg, Wisconsin. He launched into newspaper work on his own with papers at Hortonville, later at Creston, Iowa, and also Des Moines.

He purchased the Fryberg Billings Pioneer in North Dakota in 1915 and published it until he came to Cooperstown in 1919.

An appointee of Governor Sorlie, Nye distinguished himself in his work in Congress when he headed a committee inquiring into the manufacturing and traffic in arms of manufacturers during World War I. As chairman of the senate munitions investigating committee he exposed concerns who had made big profits out of World War I and sought to show, although without conclusive evidence, that the U. S. entry into World War I was due to the covert pressures exerted by munitions manufacturers.

The activities of the Nye committee which continued until 1936 strengthened isolationist sentiment and set the domestic background for the neutrality legislation of 1935, 1936 and 1937.

Nye was defeated for the senatorship in 1944 by former governor John Moses. He now heads a business concern whose headquarters are in Washington, D. C.

As a resident of Cooperstown during the twenties, Nye was particularly active in all community projects and a leader in civic development.

Source: Cooperstown Diamond Jubilee 1882-1957 Page 42