payroll, and the number climbed until it was no longer possible to corroborate. Any spending irregularities were never documented, though 13 years later, in 1953, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch remarked on the Stelle government buying a "tremendous amount of equipment, coal and other merchandise". John Stelle, in contrast to all of this, appeared deeply injured by the comments and accusations of the 1940 press, and Milburn P. Akers, a Horner insider, in fairness blamed not Stelle, but the men around him. This said, the Stelle administration, among other expenditures, purchased two new Cadillacs that the governor took on drives to Cairo, for weekends of quail hunting. Patriotic to his bones, John Stelle denounced appeasement as American involvement in Europe drew closer. With the Illinois National Guard mobilized for federal service, the governor established a reserve militia in its place. An emergency defense council was put into place, draft boards were appointed and 468 honorary commissions handed out, mostly to politicians. Stelle's fervent devotion to the military and its role of protection was genuine. Following his return to the private sector, he helped advocate for the design and passage of the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, better known as the G.I. Bill of Rights. According to his citation in the James Bryant Conant Award, "Stelle, a World War I veteran and past national commander of The American Legion, quarterbacked a team of Legion officials that, in the space of just six months, designed and put forth the main features of the GI Bill, organized massive public support and shepherded its successful passage through Congress. Stelle's leadership and behind-the-scens negotiating skills are widely credited for the legislation's surviving stubborn pockets of resistance, intense debate and a conference committee deadlock that nearly scuttled the bill at the 11th hour." Later life Late in life, Stelle was a supporter of John F. Kennedy during his 1960 campaign for President of the United States, and assisted in forming a coalition of supporters from central Illinois. Kennedy, from personal accounts, credited that coalition with helping him win that pivotal state (by a narrow 11,000 vote margin). John Henry Stelle died on July 7, 1962, at Barnes Hospital, St. Louis, of acute leukemia. Upon his death, Stelle's body was taken back to McLeansboro for a funeral conducted by the Gholson Funeral Home and laid to rest in the McLeansboro City Cemetery. In 2002, Stelle won the James