Attorney General: Homer S. Cummings
Homer Stillé Cummingswas born in Chicago, Illinois, on April 30, 1870. He received his bachelor’s degree from Yale University in 1891 and his law degree in 1893. He was admitted to the Connecticut bar the same year and practiced in Stamford, Connecticut, until 1933. Cummings was a member of the New York bar and was admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court and several federal district courts. He served as mayor of Stamford for three terms, corporation counsel from 1908 to 1912, and delegate-at-large to the Democratic National Conventions of 1900, 1904, 1924, 1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944. Cummings was a candidate for Congressman-at-Large from Connecticut in 1902 and for U.S. Senator in 1916. In 1914, he was state’s attorney for Fairfield County, Connecticut, and in 1930, chairman of the Committee on State Prison Conditions.
Cummings was appointed Attorney General of the United States by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on March 4, 1933, and served until January 2, 1939. He then practiced law privately. Cummings died in Washington, D.C., on September 10, 1956.
Henry R. Rittenberg was born in Libau, Latvia, in 1879 and moved to the United States in 1885. He studied under William Merritt Chase at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and later in Munich. He was the recipient of many awards from art clubs and academies. His portraits include Clement Attlee, Harry S. Truman, Joseph Stalin, Warren G. Harding, Alfred E. Smith, Rutherford B. Hayes, and James A. Garfield. Rittenberg painted the portrait of Attorney General Cummins in 1937. He died in 1969.