Committee on Defense Production. As chair of the Subcommittee on Independent Offices, under the Appropriations Committee, Maybank provided critical support to continue the U.S. nuclear weapons program in the early 1950s. He introduced the "Maybank Amendment", which was tacked onto the 1953 Defense Appropriations Bill. The amendment relieved the Department of Defense from federal legislation to target a percentage of its expenditures to high unemployment areas. Shortly before his death, Maybank was voted as one of the "20 Most Influential Americans" by Fortune magazine. Maybank died of a heart attack at his summer home in Flat Rock, North Carolina in 1954. He was interred in Magnolia Cemetery in Charleston. Several dignitaries attended including then-Governor James F. Byrnes, Strom Thurmond, Ernest F. Hollings, thirteen United States senators, congressmen, and state and local officials. Maybank's sudden death two months before election day threw open the 1954 Senate election in South Carolina. Strom Thurmond won as a write-in candidate against the nominee chosen by Democratic party leaders to replace Maybank. Following Maybank's death, numerous places throughout the state were named in his honor including Maybank Highway, the Burnet Maybank Bridge, and the Maybank Hall at the College of Charleston. Legacy Bertie Bowman, who became a hearing coordinator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, published his memoir, Step by Step: A Memoir of Hope, Friendship, Perseverance, and Living the American Dream, in 2009. He noted the personal support he had received from Senator Maybank. A poor black farmer's son, he went to Washington from South Carolina in 1944 as a runaway at age 14 and went to Senator Maybank. He got the youth a janitor's position, and took a personal interest in Bowman (who then had no family in Washington). Gradually the young black man advanced while working for the Senate, as he describes in his memoir. In March 2009 Senator Maybank's granddaughter, Elizabeth Parker, traveled to D.C. to meet with Bowman for the first time. A month later, more of the Maybank family met Bowman and his wife, Elaine, in Charleston. Vice President Joe Biden mentioned Maybank at the dedication ceremony for the Ernest Hollings Special Collections Library at the University of South Carolina on July 23, 2010. He said, You know, an old governor of yours, Burnet Maybank, once wrote an essay entitled, "Who Is the South Carolinian?" And here's what it said. He said, there's a deal—there is a deal of