“Nurses told my mother that I was going to be OK. They thought I could walk without a limp and without a brace. And we stopped in a shoe store on the way home and bought a pair of low-top saddle Oxford shoes, which was sort of a symbol that I was going to be a normal little boy.”

American politician and attorney

Addison Mitchell McConnell III is an American politician and attorney. He has served as a United States senator from Kentucky since 1985 and has been the state's senior senator since 1999. A Republican, McConnell has served in his seventh Senate term and is the longest-serving senator in Kentucky history. He led the Senate Republican Conference from 2007 to 2025, including one term as majority leader and two as minority leader, and became the longest-serving Senate party leader in U.S. history.