Episode Details

Charles H. Percy was born in Pensacola, Florida, in 1919 and raised in Chicago, where his Sunday school teacher, Joseph McNabb, was president of camera maker Bell & Howell. Percy joined the company as a trainee in 1938, graduated from the University of Chicago in economics in 1941, joined the board within a year, served three years in the Navy and became president in 1949 at about 30. Under him revenues rose 32 fold and the workforce 12 fold, the company listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and it moved into microfilm. A Rockefeller Republican whom Dwight Eisenhower recruited to help draft long range party goals, he lost the 1964 Illinois governor's race after reluctantly endorsing Barry Goldwater, then ran for the Senate in 1966 against his former economics professor, Paul Douglas.

In September 1966 his 21 year old daughter Valerie was murdered in her bed at the family home in Kenilworth, Illinois. Police conducted over 14,000 interviews and pursued more than 1,300 leads, focusing on a burglary gang, though nothing was stolen and no physical evidence tied anyone to the scene, and the case remains unsolved. Percy won with 56 percent. In the Senate he voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1968, made the 55 mph speed limit permanent in 1974, co-founded the Alliance to Save Energy with Hubert Humphrey and became Foreign Relations chairman after Republicans took the Senate in 1980. He survived a close 1978 race against Alex Seith after a tearful "I got your message" plea, lost to Paul Simon in 1984 and died in 2011.

• Percy and Douglas both suspended their campaigns for two weeks after the murder.
• The widow of a physician who responded that morning later said he believed the scene had been cleaned before he arrived.
• In 1970 he urged every white person to read the autobiography of Malcolm X.
• His merit-based commission for federal judges in Chicago led to John Paul Stevens's nomination to the federal bench.
• In 1981 three staffers from one of his subcommittees formed the satire troupe the Capitol Steps.