Former top federal leader dies in Whitefish

A Whitefish resident with a long history of top-level federal public service who helped expand small business and ensure racial equality during the Civil Rights era died at a Whitefish care center Dec. 30 of natural causes.

Eugene P. Foley, former campaign and policy adviser to U.S. Sen. and Vice President Hubert Humphrey, was 87.

Foley was a Minnesota native and veteran who got his start in family law in 1955. He came from a family who believed in public service. His father, John, was a well-known county attorney who also worked in state government. In 1958 Foley ran for U.S. Congress as a Democrat in a heavily Republican part of Minnesota at age 29.

“He only lost by about 500 votes,” his son Paul Foley recalled. Eugene Foley’s brother Jack was successful in his bid for U.S. Congress and represented Maryland.

While his own career as a politician didn’t immediately take off, Eugene Foley became part of a powerful winning political team. He served as campaign manager for Humphrey in the West Virginia and Wisconsin primary elections in 1960 and was New York manager for Humphrey’s 1968 presidential campaign. According to Paul, his father remained a close adviser to Humphrey throughout his career.

Foley also worked for President John F. Kennedy, who promoted him from executive assistant to the Secretary of Commerce to the national administrator of the Small Business Administration in 1963.

“He always championed small business,” Paul said.

President Lyndon B. Johnson lauded Foley in a May 24, 1965, speech where Johnson awarded the Small Businessman of the Year Award to an Alaskan man.

Johnson praised Foley for a successful first year in the position, which included increasing efficiency in the administration so the government saved $1.8 million per year. While costs went down, the number of jobs the program created increased to a record 8,000. The administration also gave 6,000 small business loans that year. The previous record was 2,500 loans.

Foley’s employees also admired their leader.

“He has a new distinction which makes him the envy of all of his colleagues,” Johnson said in the speech. “On the nomination of his own secretaries, Mr. Foley has been chosen as ‘Boss of the Year.’”

Two of Foley’s biggest accomplishments during his leadership of the Small Business Administration were the creation of the Service Corps of Retired Professionals and the Equal Opportunity Loan program.

SCORE is an organization that still exists today and consists of retired professionals who give advice to entrepreneurs free of charge.

Establishing Equal Opportunity Loans helped ensure that African Americans had equal opportunities to access small business loans.

“The other subject I have in mind is the emergence of the Negro as a small businessman,” then- Sen. Humphrey said in an August 1963 address to his colleagues in an attempt to create a White House Conference on Small Business. “On this point I would like to quote my good friend, Gene Foley, the administrator of SBA: ‘Much has been done to promote better employment opportunities for the Negro. This is as it should be and such efforts will be greatly intensified under the bill we are considering. But if Negroes are to serve society with their full potentials they cannot be limited, as they have largely been in that past, to the role of workers. Their talent as businessmen must be recognized, encouraged and developed so as to provide them with a firm base in the economy. Without such a base they cannot secure the political and social rights which belong to them.’”

Before he concluded his term as head of the Small Business Administration, Foley was awarded the Arthur Flemming Award presented to the 10 outstanding people in federal government under age 35. In 1966 he won the Government Man of the Year Award from the National Business League.

Foley left government in 1967, but still worked as an adviser to Humphrey and consultant for other major corporations and small businesses.

Paul Foley said that his father wanted to leave politics so he could pursue his own interests, including writing a book.

During his life, Eugene Foley visited all five continents and all 50 states. He spent the last four years of his life in Whitefish to be near his family. His son Bob and daughter-in-law Jane have lived in Somers for more than three decades. He is also survived by his wife Frances Dillon Foley of Somers, daughter Margaret Foley of Whitefish, and numerous out-of-state relatives. His grandchildren attend school in Kalispell and Whitefish.

A memorial service in his honor will be held in Wabasha, Minnesota, on April 30. Paul Foley anticipates there will be numerous memories shared of his father, not all of them political.

“I think he was very proud of those things that he did in the government, but he was more than that,” Paul said. “He loved life. He loved philosophy, poetry, science. He wrote a bunch of plays in his 70s. He wrote a play on Darwin and the Pope and Stalin. He loved life and he loved learning. He never stopped. He never quit.”

Reporter Megan Strickland can be reached at 758-4459 or mstrickland@dailyinterlake.com.