Author Claire Conner pictured in the May 12, 1961 issue of LIFE magazine in which her photo appears as part of a feature story on The John Birch Society. Claire was 14 years old, the youngest person in the photo. In the two page spread, she is the 3rd person from the right. Her parents, Laurene and Jay Conner, and her brother, Jay R., are on the first page of the photo 4th, 5th and 6th from the left.

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Anne is reading …

Gov. George WallaceMy parents were right-wing extremists @ Salon

Excerpted from “Wrapped in the Flag: A Personal History of America’s Radical Right”

Related: Repeal the 17th Amendment. Until 1913, Americans didn’t elect senators, state legislators did.

John Birch Society Founders

View members of John Birch Society Council larger

Founding members of the John Birch Society Council included author’s father S.J. Conner, president of the Conroth Company and Fred C. Koch, a founder of Koch Industries and father of today’s well-known Koch brothers.

Anne Reflects On McCarthyism

The Republican War on Women Gives Me Nightmares April 6, 2011

Ten years later I sat on the Chelsea stoop of my New York apartment with my landlord, who was a playwright. He asked me about my background and I explained that I grew up in Minnesota but I so loved Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin.

I volunteered that I knew Senator Wiley from Wisconsin, that he was such a great man. He insisted that we be very patriotic with our flag raising ceremony each day, but I was all for it.

My playwright landlord just looked at me, his young tenant and laughed. ‘Do you not know that Senator Wiley was Joseph McCarthy’s right-hand man?’ he asked me.

‘No way,’ I exclaimed.

‘Believe it,’ he said. And of course it is true.

The same man that I respected and honored, the man whose grandson was my first boyfriend, whose granddaughters were great friends to me, the town that recognized my talent and ran me for student council president when I was the new girl in school, also produced the co-leader of the McCarthy hearings.