Wendell Willkie accepted the Republican presidential nomination in Callaway Park on August 17, 1940, after a nationwide grassroots campaign, before an estimated crowd of 250,000 in the park and along adjacent streets, and he established campaign headquarters in Rushville. He lost the election to Franklin Delano Roosevelt but received 22,304,755 votes. Born in Elwood in 1892, he earned bachelor and law degrees from Indiana University, practiced law in Indiana, Ohio, and New York, and served as president of Commonwealth and Southern Corporation, a New York utility holding company serving eleven states, from 1933 to 1939. His book One World, published in 1943, called for world peace. He died in 1944 and was buried in Rushville.