Topic: Hubert Humphrey

Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Jr. (May 27, 1911 – January 13, 1978), served under President Lyndon B. Johnson as the 38th Vice President of the United States. Humphrey twice served as a United States Senator from Minnesota, and served as Democratic Majority Whip. He was a founder of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and Americans for Democratic Action. He also served as Mayor of Minneapolis, Minnesota from 1945 to 1949. Humphrey was the nominee of the Democratic Party in the 1968 presidential election but lost to the Republican nominee, Richard Nixon.

Humphrey was born in a room over his father's drugstore in Wallace, South Dakota. He was the son of Hubert Humphrey, Sr. (1882–1949) and Ragnild Kristine Sannes (1883–1973), who was a Norwegian immigrant. Humphrey spent most of his youth in Doland, South Dakota, on the Dakota prairie; the town's population was about 700 people when he lived there. His father was a pharmacist who served as mayor and a town-council member. In the late 1920s a severe economic downturn hit Doland; both of the town's banks closed and Humphrey's father struggled to keep his drugstore open.

After his son graduated from Doland's high school, Hubert, Sr. left Doland and opened a new drugstore in the larger town of Huron, South Dakota (population 11,000), where he hoped to improve his fortunes. Because of the family's financial struggles, Hubert had to leave the University of Minnesota after just one year to help his father in the new drugstore. He earned a pharmacist's license from the Capitol College of Pharmacy in Denver, Colorado (completing a two-year licensure program in just six months), and spent the years from 1930 to 1937 helping his father run the family drugstore. Over time the "Humphrey Drug Company" in Huron became a profitable enterprise and the family again prospered.