“Re-living the days of the turn of the century at Disneyland, Senator Thomas J. Dodd of Connecticut is ready to chauffeur his family in an electric car down Main Street USA at Walt Disney’s Magic Kingdom in California, July 12, 1960. While Mrs. Jackie Dodd sits next to the Senator, Christopher (16), Martha (19) and Nicholas (12) Dodd – left to right – view the 1890 sights from the back seat.” (AP Photo)Upon the somewhat surprising announcement this week that former presidential candidate and long-time Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) would not seek re-election in 2010, I was reminded of this picture of Dodd and his family visiting Disneyland in 1960. Dodd’s father, Senator Thomas J. Dodd, also represented Connecticut in the Congress, serving from 1959 to 1971. This was apparently a lofty enough position that Sen. Dodd could commandeer his own vehicle on Main Street while visiting Disneyland, and so we find the family (including young Chris, aged 16) aboard this snazzy electric car – Walt was always ahead of his time!
Senator Dodd was also a famous lawyer who served in the Roosevelt Administration and was the number two prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials in 1946.
He became in a Senator in 1958; he had lost a Senate race in 1956, and had he won, our world may have been very different. He lost to a man named Prescott Bush, whose son and grandson were both named George, and were both presidents.
Good points! It had totally slipped my mind that he was a prosecutor at Nuremberg…