After graduation, he served as an officer in the United States Army in European Theater of Operations during World War II and received the Bronze Star Medal for valor and Purple Heart for injuries during the Battle of the Bulge.
Carrol was senior executive vice president of sales at Lawson Products Inc. in Des Plaines, Illinois at his retirement in 1996.
After reading the article, Carrol went to a nearby Western Union office and sent a telegram to Nixon's office in Washington, D.C. Carrol, who was working as a traveling salesman in rural Texas, began the telegram: "On behalf of the great state of Texas, I wish to offer the Nixons a cocker spaniel puppy, purebred and registered."
The letter, which Carrol kept framed in his den, read in part: "The senator had been planning to buy a puppy for the little girls and they were particularly fond of cocker spaniels.
Carrol later was a guest on the quiz shows What's My Line and I've Got A Secret, but otherwise never received much publicity -- "nor was I seeking it," he told The Baltimore Sun in 2002, the 50th anniversary of the speech.