Florence Newcomb & L. Arthur Larson: The Perfect Match

JACOB SMITH > JAMES SMITH > JOHN R SMITH > OLLIE B. SMITH m Robert Kingsbury Newcomb > FLORENCE SMITH m Lewis Arthur Larson

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Florence, 1935

Florence Faye Newcomb was born 24 Apr 1909 in Lake County, South Dakota. There was always something that shined about Florence. From an early age she was interested in performing and winning. She attended Easter State Normal School and was a charter member of the Theta Chapter of Pi Kappa Delta, which got its charter at the school in 1930. Florence thrived and excelled in forensics, especially extemporaneous speaking. She also participated heavily in theatre arts, performing in student plays throughout her time on campus. She was also May Queen in her senior year.

In 1930, the school got its first shot at attending the national Pi Kappa Delta convention and tournament. Florence took top prize in women's extemporaneous speaking. This is the same year that L. Arthur Larson of Augustana College took second place in the men's competition. Reportedly, they had met previously while in high school and he lost to her in a debate on the "independence for the Philippines."

L. Arthur Larson

L Arthur Larson was born 04 Jul 1910 in Pennington, South Dakota to municipal court Judge Lewis Larson and Annie Bertia Huseboe. He excelled in school and graduated from Augustana as valedictorian. He won a Rhodes Scholarship and in 1931, left for London and Oxford to study. He secured four degrees while there, including one in civil jurisprudence.

In the meantime, young Florence had secured her first teaching post at Freeman High School in Huron, teaching English and Speech at a salary of $1,350 per year. In her second year of teaching, her drama students participated in a dramatic contest conducted by the University of South Dakota and took first place performing, "The Variant," a play about the last hours of a condemned man.

After traveling to London, where she graduated with special credit from the Royal Academy of
Dramatic Arts, she returned to South Dakota. In 1934, she continued to seek the limelight and won  the local challenge in a nationwide  radio contest sponsored by Columbia to find its next radio star to co-star with actor Dick Powell in a new radio program called, "Hollywood Hotel." She did get an expense-paid trip to New York, but did not win the national competition.

In July 1935, she would marry L. Arthur Larson. He got a job at the famous firm in Milwaukee, Wisconsin who specialized in insurance law, Quarles, Spence & Quarles in 1935, but found himself laid off in 1939. He then went to University of Tennessee College of Law in Knoxville. It was there he and Florence had their two children, a boy and a girl.

President Dwight D Eishenhower

From there, he went to Washington DC during the war years where he served at the Office of Price Administration and as the Chief, Scandinavian Branch of the Foreign Economic Administration.In 1945, he was appointed assistant law professor at Cornell School of Law in Ithaca, New York. It was during his time there, he became a respected expert on worker's compensation law. He authored a 11-volume treatise on the subject in 1952, just before being heading to London as a Fulbright Fellow at the School of Economics. He was appointed as Dean of the Pittsburgh School of Law in Pennsylvania in 1953. During that time I found one reference to Florence's continuing involvement in theatre, when she was in a play there that made the news.

Always a registered Republican, he was of a centrist viewpoint, which appealed to President Dwight D. Eishenhower, who had read Larson's book, "A Republican Looks at His Party," and agreed with the tenets he espoused. Eisenhower had him come aboard as an Undersecretary of Labor in 1954. He then went on to serve briefly as the head of the US Office of Information Agency, and then as Eisenhower's chief speechwriter. He then spent a year in 1958 as Knapp Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin School of Law.

Rule of Law Research Center, 1960

Larson moved on to Duke University as the a law professor and later as director of the Rule of Law Research Center at Duke, a position he held for many years until his retirement in 1980. In 1975, he was named the James B. Duke Professor of Law. He also continued to dip into politics and foreign policy and consulted with President Lyndon Johnson, the US State Department, and the United Nations. He was cited as a champion for peace.  He wrote several more books, including in 1968, "Eisenhower: The President Nobody Knew."

In the Duke Law School Review: A Tribute to L. Arthur Larson, one of those providing tribute indicated that Florence had developed a reputation as a sculptor.

He remained the country's leading expert on worker's comp law and his books were the standard reference in the field. And, he was considered a leading expert in foreign affairs, disarmament, and arms control. In 1960, he won the World Peace Award of the American Freedom Association.

After he retired, he continued to write. The couple were married for 55 years when Florence died 02 Mar 1991 and Arthur died 27 Mar 1993, both in Durham, North Carolina.