Charles Wesley Roberts (December 14, 1902 – April 9, 1976) was a Kansas businessman who was Chairman of the Republican National Committee for four months in 1953 under Dwight D. Eisenhower.

C. Wesley Roberts
Chair of the Republican National Committee
In office
January 17, 1953 – March 27, 1953
Preceded byArthur Summerfield
Succeeded byLeonard W. Hall
Personal details
Born
Charles Wesley Roberts

(1902-12-14)December 14, 1902
Oskaloosa, Kansas, U.S.
DiedApril 9, 1976(1976-04-09) (aged 73)
Oskaloosa, Kansas, U.S.
Political partyRepublican
SpouseRuth Patrick
ChildrenPat (son)

C. Wesley Roberts (or Wes Roberts) was born in Oskaloosa, Kansas, where he died, the son of Daisy Marian (née Needham) and Francis Henry "Frank" Roberts.[1] The Roberts family published the smalltown weekly Oskaloosa Independent for more than a century. Davis Publications currently owns The Oskaloosa Independent.[2]

He was the father of U.S. Senator Pat Roberts.

Alvin Scott McCoy of The Kansas City Star won a Pulitzer Prize in 1954 for local reporting for a series of articles that drove Roberts to resign his RNC chairmanship.[3] Roberts was accused of collecting a $10,000 commission on the sale of a hospital to the State of Kansas which the state already owned.[4]

Footnotes edit

  1. ^ "Charles Patrick "Pat" Roberts, at rootsweb, an ancestry.com community". Archived from the original on September 5, 2008. Retrieved April 5, 2007.
  2. ^ "Contact Us – JeffCountyNews.com". Retrieved September 27, 2022.
  3. ^ 1954 Winners, Awards, The Pulitzer Prizes website
  4. ^ "Republicans: Storm in Kansas". Time. March 30, 1953. Archived from the original on December 22, 2008. Retrieved March 12, 2009.
Party political offices
Preceded by Chair of the Republican National Committee
1953
Succeeded by