Art Vidich for Governor - An Aspiring Immigrant's Path to Sociology

Art Vidich for Governor

Arthur Vidich once told me that he had aspirations of becoming Governor of Wisconsin. While I certainly found such comments fascinating, as his eldest son, these were taken with a grain of salt along with everything else we heard at the dinner table.  To my surprise, last weekend my brother Paul gave me bag full of old photographs and negatives that I had never seen before. Within that bag were some priceless negatives including the one for the photograph above. This photo was undoubtedly taken in the mid 1940s when Art Vidich was going to the University of Wisconsin in Madison. While there is no date on the photo, one can estimate its date as having been taken between 1943 and 1944. Art joined the Marines in 1944 - so no mention of his military experience appears on the poster touting his experience (see poster held by these two young men).  The posters indicate that Art was a candidate for Governor in the Federalist party - not one of the major parties in Wisconsin during that era.  The Federalists believed in the importance of a strong central government.

After joining the Marine Corps Art spent several months as a machine gun instructor on Parris Island, South Carolina. His stay on Parris Island would not be long. He was soon shipped off to Iowa Jima. Fortunately his ship broke down in the Pacific and he was re-routed to be part of the first invasion force that landed in Nagasaki several days after the atomic bomb decimated that city. After spending nine months on Kyushu Island (the island where Nagasaki is located) with the mission of demilitarizing the Japanese he returned to Wisconsin in July 1946 to enroll in the graduate department of sociology at the University of Wisconsin.  His political ambition to be Governor of Wisconsin was lost in the War. Instead of pursuing a career in politics he chose to become a sociologist by profession and a political observer as his personal hobby.