The street where we live

Rep. Claude Pepper (D-FL)

The First Universalist Church of Camp Hill is located on Sen. Claude Pepper Drive. Claude Pepper (1900-1989), a progressive lion of the United States Congress, was born in a sharecropper’s shack north of Camp Hill and was raised in the area. He would go on to serve the State of Florida in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

First elected to the U.S. Senate in 1938, Sen. Pepper was a staunch ally of Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal reforms. He championed working people and the poor, supporting a minimum wage, national health care and social security. Sen. Pepper was defeated in the Democratic primary in 1950, by a well-financed and well-planned campaign that targeted his liberal record. Dubbed “Red Pepper” in the days of Joe McCarthy, he was beaten in what was considered, at that time, one of the nation’s dirtiest political campaigns ever.

Claude Pepper was one of a handful of men who served first in the Senate and later in the House of Representatives. In 1962, the former senator was elected to the House by voters in a Miami congressional district. Back in Washington, he began a second career of public service, becoming a tireless and effective spokesman for the elderly until his own death at the age of 88. His body lay in state in the Capitol rotunda for two days.

The street in front of our church isn’t the only memorial to Claude Pepper. Among other things, there are The Claude Pepper Center for Intercultural Dialogue, The Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center at Yale, and The Claude Pepper Foundation.

The First Universalist Church has overlooked state Highway 50 in Camp Hill since long before it was named in honor of Claude Pepper, but we don’t think we could have chosen a better address.