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Military Service: National Guard

War(s) Served:  World War I

NORMAN STANLEY CASE was born in Providence, Rhode Island. He graduated from Brown University in 1908 and studied law at both Harvard University and Boston University Law School, graduating from BU in 1912. He served with the Rhode Island National Guard on the Mexican border in 1916 and as Captain of a machine gun battalion in Europe during World War I. He practiced law in Providence and served on the Providence City Council during the war years despite being absent from the country. In 1921 he was named U.S. District Attorney for Rhode Island by President Warren Harding, serving until 1926, after which he won election as Lieutenant Governor. He became acting governor upon the death of Aram Pothier in February, 1928, winning election in his own right the following November and reelection in 1930. Case served as governor during the Great Depression, and in the belief that local government held primary responsibility for assisting the unemployed and needy, he supported a law to permit cities and towns to borrow from the state's reserves at an interest rate of three percent. He lost the election of 1932 when voters favored a Democrat whose views were in line with those of then-Presidential candidate Franklin Roosevelt. However, in 1934 President Roosevelt appointed Case to the Federal Communications Commission, a post that he held until 1945, when he resumed the practice of law with a firm in Washington, DC.

Sources:

Mohr, Ralph S. Governors for Three Hundred Years (1638-1954): Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. State of Rhode Island, Graves Registration Committee, August 1954.

The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. F. New York: James T. White & Company.

Sobel, Robert, and John Raimo, eds. Biographical Directory of the Governors of the United States, 1789-1978, Vol. 4. Westport, CT: Meckler Books, 1978. 4 vols.

WorldStatesmen.org