Former U.S. Senator Daniel Brewster died late Sunday evening at his home in Owings Mills. Brewster, who was 83, died of liver cancer. He served in the United States Senate from 1963-1969.

Brewster attended Gilman and St. Andrew’s (in New Hampshire) before entering Princeton and enlisting in the U.S. Marine Corps. Brewster was a Lieutenant in the Pacific Theater and landed at Guam and Okinawa. He was wounded seven total times in 3 incidents. The Sun article states that Webster “was awarded a purple heart, two gold stars and two bronze stars.”

I was in the military as an enlisted man for 6 years and I’ve been a student of military matters (especially history) for most of my life and I didn’t think I’d ever seen an award referred to as a “gold star” before and I fact-checked it with another friend of mine who is much like me, except he served longer and also was commissioned as an officer and he confirmed that there was no such award as a “gold star.”

My guess, which my friend concurred with, is that the two gold stars referred to are actually the 2nd and 3rd awards of the Purple Heart that are pinned to the medal or ribbon. I’m assuming the rest of the sentence was correct and that Senator Brewster was indeed awarded the Bronze Star twice (althought service stars added to campaign ribbons or medals can also be bronze.) The wikipedia entry for service stars includes a mention of people mixing up service stars with the Bronze Star and Silver Star – the same could presumably happen with the gold one for someone unfamiliar with military awards. If anyone else has thoughts on what the actual awards were, please feel free to post in the comments below. I’ve also run the situation by others to get their thoughts.

Getting back to Senator Brewster’s biography, he finished his undergraduate education at Johns Hopkins after World War Two and then attended the University of Maryland for Law School. He was elected to the House of Delegates in 1950 and then to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1958 from the Second District, which included parts of Baltimore, Carroll and Harford counties.

Following his Senate election in 1962, he was a favorite son candidate for President in the 1964 Maryland primary. Brewster filled in for LBJ against George Wallace that year in the primary. He was a Marine Corps Reservist while serving on the Armed Services committee and spent some time in Vietnam while a Senator. He retired from the USMCR as a colonel.

Brewster lost the 1968 election to Charles Mathias in the wake of his divorce from his first wife and subsequent remarriage to a previous fiancee who dumped him during the War. He was indicted by the federal government in 1969 on charges that he took money from Spiegel in exchange for voting for low postage. Appeals stretched things out 6 years and he pleaded no contest to accepting an unlawful gratuity (without “corrupt intent.”)

Brewster was divorced from his second wife not long after the marriage and was married a third time in 1976 to a woman he met in rehab. He suffered from lymphoma and leukemia in the 1980s and was diagnosed with bladder cancer a few years ago which spread to his liver. He is survived by 3 sons, two daughters, three current and former stepchildren, two brothers, a sister, 4 grandchildren and 2 step-grandchildren.

Both Steny Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi got their start working for Brewster.

Related:
Congressional Biography
Wikipedia Biography