Later Elections
In 1960, Sparkman defeated the Republican Julian E. Elgin of Montgomery, who received 164,868 votes (29.8 percent) in the Senate contest. Six years later, Elgin ran again against Sparkman as an Independent but polled few votes. In 1966, Sparkman defeated another Republican John Grenier, the former state GOP chairman and an attorney from Birmingham, who polled 39 percent of the vote.
Initially Grenier had planned to run for governor in 1966, and Martin was poised to oppose John Sparkman, as he had four years earlier against Sparkman's colleague, J. Lister Hill. However, The New York Times predicted that toppling the "tight one-party oligarchy" would be a herculean task. Though Sparkman trailed in some polls, The Times speculated that he would rebound because Alabamians were so accustomed to voting straight Democratic tickets.
In his last Senate race in 1972, Sparkman easily defeated President Nixon's former Postmaster General, the Republican businessman Winton M. Blount of Montgomery, originally from Union Springs.
In 1985, Sparkman died of natural causes in a nursing home in Huntsville, at the age of eighty-five. Survived by his wife and daughter, he was interred in Huntsville at the historic Maple Hill Cemetery.
Sparkman High School in Harvest, Alabama and Sparkman School in Somerville, Alabama, are named in his honor.
Read more about this topic: John Sparkman
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