Gerald Nye (1892-1971) was a U.S. Senator from North Dakota for 19 years. During his tenure, Nye gained national headlines for his leadership in several Senate investigations, including the Teapot Dome scandal and the inquiry into the business practices of munitions makers during World War I. He was a strong voice for American isolationism and vehemently opposed to U.S. involvement in World War II.

Gerald Prentice Nye was born in Hortonville, Wisconsin, on December 19, 1892, the first of four children born to Irwin Raymond and Phoebe Ella (Prentice) Nye. Nye's mother, always rather frail, died two months before his fourteenth birthday. Two years later, his father remarried, and Nye developed a warm relationship with his stepmother, Annie Semple. It was his father, however, that affected Nye's life most intensely. Soon after Nye's birth, his father, the editor of the weekly newspaper in Hortonville, moved his family to Wittenberg...