Bourke B. Hickenlooper
Encyclopedia
Bourke Blakemore Hickenlooper (July 21, 1896 – September 4, 1971), was a Republican
politician from the US state of Iowa
. He was lieutenant governor from 1939 to 1943 and then the 29th Governor of Iowa from 1943 to 1945. In 1944, he won election to the first of four terms in the United States Senate
.
in Taylor County
in southwestern Iowa, when Grover Cleveland
was still President of the United States. He attended Iowa State University
, then Iowa State College in Ames
, but his education was interrupted by his service in the United States Army during World War I. In April 1917, Hickenlooper enrolled in the officers' training camp at Fort Snelling
, Minnesota. He was commissioned a second lieutenant
and assigned to France as a battalion orientation officer.
After military service, Hickenlooper early in 1919 returned to the United States. In June 1919, he received his bachelor's degree in industrial science from Iowa State. He then enrolled at the University of Iowa College of Law
, from which in 1922 he procured a law degree. He thereafter practiced law in Cedar Rapids
. He served in the Iowa House of Representatives
from 1934 to 1937.His grandfather had earlier served in the same body.
of Bedford
to obtain a nickel's worth of asafetida for his mother. The druggist just gave him the asafetida, a pungent herb used in cooking, to avoid having to write out both "asafetida" and the long name "Bourke Blakemore Hickenlooper."
As lieutenant governor, Hickenlooper saved a Cedar Rapids woman from drowning in the Cedar River. The extensive publicity from his rescue mission generated him much support when he ran for governor in 1942.
In 1944, Hickenlooper easily unseated the Democrat
Guy M. Gillette in the U.S. Senate election. As a senator from 1945 to 1969, Hickenlooper was among the most conservative and isolationist
members of his party. He became the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, serving alongside longtime Democratic chairman J. William Fulbright
of Arkansas
.In 1967, near the end of his Senate tenure, Hickenlooper and Fulbright were instrumental in the drafting of the Consular Treaty, the first such international agreement between the United States and the former Soviet Union
.
Hickenlooper was a co-author of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954
, which initiated the development of atomic power for peaceful uses. He also chaired the Joint Congressional Atomic Energy Committee. In this capacity, Hickenlooper questioned the whereabouts of missing uranium
from an AEC laboratory in Illinois
and urged the removal of AEC chairman David Lilienthal
, who claimed no knowledge of the incident. Though the AEC committee declined by a 9 to 8 vote to remove Lilienthal, he nevertheless resigned some six months later, having claimed that his career had been ruined by the mystery of the missing uranium.
In 1958, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower
appointed Hickenlooper as a U.S. representative to the United Nations General Assembly
. In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson
named him to a congressional team to oversee the elections in the former South Vietnam
.
Hickenlooper in time became one of the most powerful Republicans in the Senate, having served from 1962 to 1969 as the Republican Policy Committee chairman. In this position, he developed an intense intraparty rivalry with fellow Midwesterner Everett McKinley Dirksen of Illinois, the Senate Republican leader from 1959 to 1969. Hickenlooper opposed civil rights
legislation, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964
. Dirksen was working in collaboration with U.S. Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota
, the Democratic floor manager of the legislation and later Vice President of the United States from 1965 to 1969. Dirksen persuaded all but six of the Republican senators to support the 1964 measure. Hickenlooper hence joined Norris Cotton
of New Hampshire
, Barry M. Goldwater of Arizona
, John G. Tower of Texas, Edwin L. Mechem
of New Mexico
, and Milward Simpson of Wyoming
in voting against the bill championed by their other GOP
colleagues.Hickenlooper said that his opposition to civil rights legislation was based on a fear that such laws would lead to "bureaucrats snooping into every area of American life."
Hickenlooper once told an interviewer that he particularly enjoyed campaigning for office, having so frequently been before the voters for consideration. Columnists Joseph
and Stewart Alsop
once said in humor that the name Bourke B. Hickenlooper is "exactly the same name an English satirist would choose for an Iowa Republican."Memorial Addresses and Other Tributes in the Congress of the United States on the Life and Contributions of Bourke B. Hickenlooper, p. 6
The Mason City Globe-Gazette
in Mason City
noted on Hickenlooper's death that he despaired of obtaining political success because of his name. "The abbreviation used by friends [Hick] was even worse. But Hickenlooper found the secret in kidding about his last name in public, making more jokes about it than [had] his political foes."
– led by Fidel Castro
– which had expropriated U.S.-owned and U.S.-controlled sugar plantations and refineries.
The amendment followed the seizure of three U.S. oil companies in Cuba and Argentina
. It was also in response to a ruling of the United States Supreme Court that in effect denied the right of an American sugar company to contest the seizure of its holdings by the Castro government.
Hickenlooper viewed his amendment as guaranteeing a U.S. businessman his day in court whenever property is seized by a foreign government. The Supreme Court's ruling, wrote Hickenlooper in 1964, "presumes that any inquiry . . . into the acts of a foreign state will be a matter of embarrassment to the conduct of foreign policy."
The amendment was strongly opposed by the administration of U.S. President John F. Kennedy
, which argued that its passage would threaten all U.S. diplomacy, particularly in Latin America. It was defeated on the Senate floor, 45 to 35.
Wiley Mayne
, a U.S. representative from Iowa from 1967 to 1975, said that the Senate erred in rejecting the Hickenlooper Amendment. "Had the amendment been enforced throughout the years, it would appear that we would have been in a far better position in our relations with the less developed nations and certainly . . . in regard to our balance of payments
. . . . "
Hickenlooper retired to his home in Chevy Chase
, Maryland, where he and his wife had lived since he came to Washington in 1945. He had been planning to relocate to an apartment the month that he died. He complained of abdominal pains and died shortly thereafter over the Labor Day weekend of 1971 while he was visiting friends, the Henry R. Holthusens, in Shelter Island
, New York.
Hickenlooper and his wife, the former Verna Bensch, who preceded him in death by some nine months, are interred in a mausoleum
in the Cedar Memorial Cemetery in Cedar Rapids. The couple had two children, David Hickenlooper, who resided in Bloomfield
, Iowa, at the time of his parents' death, and Jane H. Oberlin, the wife of Russell Oberlin of Des Moines
.
Hickenlooper was not the longest-serving popularly elected U.S. senator from Iowa. Charles Grassley surpassed Hickenlooper's four terms with his fifth election in 2004 and his sixth in 2010. William B. Allison
served thirty-five years, but his service came during the period in which the state legislatures chose senators.
Hickenlooper's name was on an Iowa ballot nineteen times, including primaries
and general elections; he won seventeen of his races.
He lost his first attempt on the ballot in 1932 in a bid for county attorney
of Linn County
in eastern Iowa. He lost the lieutenant governor's race in 1936. He also lost the 1938 Republican primary for lieutenant governor, but the nominee chosen, Harry B. Thompson of Muscatine
, withdrew, and the Republican state convention instead placed Hickenlooper on the general election ballot. He never lost another election, his final victory being the 1962 Senate election.
The Cedar Rapids Gazette described Hickenlooper as having had "a keen sense of humor, [was] a staunch defender of the private enterprise system, an advocate of a farm economy unfettered by government controls, and an opponent of excessive spending both at home and abroad. . . . Indeed, his was an enviable record that will serve as an inspiration to all Iowans with political aspirations."
Hickenlooper's Senate colleague John C. Stennis
, a Mississippi
Democrat, said that he regarded Hickenlooper "as one of the most valuable men we had in this body. I never saw him go off the deep end on anything without thinking the matter out, and I never saw him lose his patience though I have seen him under a lot of pressure. . . .
On Hickenlooper's death, U.S. President Richard M. Nixon, whom Hickenlooper vigorously supported, issued a telegram referring to the former senator's "unwavering devotion to the public trust and his inspiring love of America. We will always remember him with special admiration and affection, and our sentiments will be shared by a grateful public. His career was crowded with proofs of his determination to serve the best interests of his constituents and of the country. These accomplishments are etched for all time in the annals of our legislative history and in the hearts of the people he served. . . ."
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
politician from the US state of Iowa
Iowa
Iowa is a state located in the Midwestern United States, an area often referred to as the "American Heartland". It derives its name from the Ioway people, one of the many American Indian tribes that occupied the state at the time of European exploration. Iowa was a part of the French colony of New...
. He was lieutenant governor from 1939 to 1943 and then the 29th Governor of Iowa from 1943 to 1945. In 1944, he won election to the first of four terms in the United States Senate
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
.
Background
An only child of a farming couple, Hickenlooper was born in BlocktonBlockton, Iowa
Blockton is a city in Taylor County, Iowa, United States. The population was 192 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Blockton's longitude and latitude coordinatesin decimal form are 40.615851, -94.476654...
in Taylor County
Taylor County, Iowa
-2010 census:The 2010 census recorded a population of 6,317 in the county, with a population density of . There were 3,107 housing units, of which 2,679 were occupied.-2000 census:...
in southwestern Iowa, when Grover Cleveland
Grover Cleveland
Stephen Grover Cleveland was the 22nd and 24th president of the United States. Cleveland is the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms and therefore is the only individual to be counted twice in the numbering of the presidents...
was still President of the United States. He attended Iowa State University
Iowa State University
Iowa State University of Science and Technology, more commonly known as Iowa State University , is a public land-grant and space-grant research university located in Ames, Iowa, United States. Iowa State has produced astronauts, scientists, and Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners, along with a host of...
, then Iowa State College in Ames
Ames, Iowa
Ames is a city located in the central part of the U.S. state of Iowa in Story County, and approximately north of Des Moines. The U.S. Census Bureau designates that Ames, Iowa metropolitan statistical area as encompassing all of Story County, and which, when combined with the Boone, Iowa...
, but his education was interrupted by his service in the United States Army during World War I. In April 1917, Hickenlooper enrolled in the officers' training camp at Fort Snelling
Fort Snelling, Minnesota
Fort Snelling, originally known as Fort Saint Anthony, was a military fortification located at the confluence of the Minnesota River and Mississippi River in Hennepin County, Minnesota...
, Minnesota. He was commissioned a second lieutenant
Second Lieutenant
Second lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer military rank in many armed forces.- United Kingdom and Commonwealth :The rank second lieutenant was introduced throughout the British Army in 1871 to replace the rank of ensign , although it had long been used in the Royal Artillery, Royal...
and assigned to France as a battalion orientation officer.
After military service, Hickenlooper early in 1919 returned to the United States. In June 1919, he received his bachelor's degree in industrial science from Iowa State. He then enrolled at the University of Iowa College of Law
University of Iowa College of Law
The University of Iowa College of Law is one of the eleven professional graduate schools at the University of Iowa, located in Iowa City, Iowa. Founded in 1865, it is the oldest law school in continuous operation west of the Mississippi River. The law school was ranked as the 27th best law school...
, from which in 1922 he procured a law degree. He thereafter practiced law in Cedar Rapids
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Cedar Rapids is the second largest city in Iowa and is the county seat of Linn County. The city lies on both banks of the Cedar River, north of Iowa City and east of Des Moines, the state's capital and largest city...
. He served in the Iowa House of Representatives
Iowa House of Representatives
The Iowa House of Representatives is the lower house of the Iowa General Assembly. There are 100 members of the House of Representatives, representing 100 single-member districts across the state with populations of approximately 29,750 for each constituency...
from 1934 to 1937.His grandfather had earlier served in the same body.
A political life
When he ran for lieutenant governor, the first time unsuccessfully in 1936, Hickenlooper told voters they could call him plain "Hick" because of the difficulty of pronouncing his name. He told a yarn about his going as a child to a drugstore in the county seatCounty seat
A county seat is an administrative center, or seat of government, for a county or civil parish. The term is primarily used in the United States....
of Bedford
Bedford, Iowa
Bedford is a city in Taylor County, Iowa, United States. The population was 1,620 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Taylor County. Lake of Three Fires State Park is located a few miles northeast of Bedford.-History:...
to obtain a nickel's worth of asafetida for his mother. The druggist just gave him the asafetida, a pungent herb used in cooking, to avoid having to write out both "asafetida" and the long name "Bourke Blakemore Hickenlooper."
As lieutenant governor, Hickenlooper saved a Cedar Rapids woman from drowning in the Cedar River. The extensive publicity from his rescue mission generated him much support when he ran for governor in 1942.
In 1944, Hickenlooper easily unseated the Democrat
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
Guy M. Gillette in the U.S. Senate election. As a senator from 1945 to 1969, Hickenlooper was among the most conservative and isolationist
Isolationism
Isolationism is the policy or doctrine of isolating one's country from the affairs of other nations by declining to enter into alliances, foreign economic commitments, international agreements, etc., seeking to devote the entire efforts of one's country to its own advancement and remain at peace by...
members of his party. He became the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, serving alongside longtime Democratic chairman J. William Fulbright
J. William Fulbright
James William Fulbright was a United States Senator representing Arkansas from 1945 to 1975.Fulbright was a Southern Democrat and a staunch multilateralist who supported the creation of the United Nations and the longest serving chairman in the history of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee...
of Arkansas
Arkansas
Arkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its name is an Algonquian name of the Quapaw Indians. Arkansas shares borders with six states , and its eastern border is largely defined by the Mississippi River...
.In 1967, near the end of his Senate tenure, Hickenlooper and Fulbright were instrumental in the drafting of the Consular Treaty, the first such international agreement between the United States and the former Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
.
Hickenlooper was a co-author of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954
Atomic Energy Act of 1954
The Atomic Energy Act of 1954, 42 U.S.C. § 2011 et seq., is a United States federal law that is, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, "the fundamental U.S...
, which initiated the development of atomic power for peaceful uses. He also chaired the Joint Congressional Atomic Energy Committee. In this capacity, Hickenlooper questioned the whereabouts of missing uranium
Uranium
Uranium is a silvery-white metallic chemical element in the actinide series of the periodic table, with atomic number 92. It is assigned the chemical symbol U. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons...
from an AEC laboratory in Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
and urged the removal of AEC chairman David Lilienthal
David Lilienthal
David Eli Lilienthal was an American public official who served in many different governmental roles over the course of his career...
, who claimed no knowledge of the incident. Though the AEC committee declined by a 9 to 8 vote to remove Lilienthal, he nevertheless resigned some six months later, having claimed that his career had been ruined by the mystery of the missing uranium.
In 1958, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...
appointed Hickenlooper as a U.S. representative to the United Nations General Assembly
United Nations General Assembly
For two articles dealing with membership in the General Assembly, see:* General Assembly members* General Assembly observersThe United Nations General Assembly is one of the five principal organs of the United Nations and the only one in which all member nations have equal representation...
. In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson , often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States...
named him to a congressional team to oversee the elections in the former South Vietnam
South Vietnam
South Vietnam was a state which governed southern Vietnam until 1975. It received international recognition in 1950 as the "State of Vietnam" and later as the "Republic of Vietnam" . Its capital was Saigon...
.
Hickenlooper in time became one of the most powerful Republicans in the Senate, having served from 1962 to 1969 as the Republican Policy Committee chairman. In this position, he developed an intense intraparty rivalry with fellow Midwesterner Everett McKinley Dirksen of Illinois, the Senate Republican leader from 1959 to 1969. Hickenlooper opposed civil rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
legislation, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a landmark piece of legislation in the United States that outlawed major forms of discrimination against African Americans and women, including racial segregation...
. Dirksen was working in collaboration with U.S. Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota
Minnesota
Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...
, the Democratic floor manager of the legislation and later Vice President of the United States from 1965 to 1969. Dirksen persuaded all but six of the Republican senators to support the 1964 measure. Hickenlooper hence joined Norris Cotton
Norris Cotton
Norris H. Cotton was an American Republican politician from the state of New Hampshire.Norris Cotton was born on a farm in Warren, New Hampshire. He was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire and Wesleyan University in Connecticut...
of New Hampshire
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...
, Barry M. Goldwater of Arizona
Arizona
Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...
, John G. Tower of Texas, Edwin L. Mechem
Edwin L. Mechem
Edwin Leard Mechem was a prominent Republican politician from New Mexico. He served as the 15th, 17th and 19th Governor of New Mexico and represented the state in the United States Senate...
of New Mexico
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
, and Milward Simpson of Wyoming
Wyoming
Wyoming is a state in the mountain region of the Western United States. The western two thirds of the state is covered mostly with the mountain ranges and rangelands in the foothills of the Eastern Rocky Mountains, while the eastern third of the state is high elevation prairie known as the High...
in voting against the bill championed by their other GOP
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
colleagues.Hickenlooper said that his opposition to civil rights legislation was based on a fear that such laws would lead to "bureaucrats snooping into every area of American life."
Hickenlooper once told an interviewer that he particularly enjoyed campaigning for office, having so frequently been before the voters for consideration. Columnists Joseph
Joseph Alsop
Joseph Wright Alsop V was an American journalist and syndicated newspaper columnist from the 1930s through the 1970s.-Early years:...
and Stewart Alsop
Stewart Alsop
Stewart Johonnot Oliver Alsop was an American newspaper columnist and political analyst.Born and raised in Avon, Connecticut, Alsop attended Groton School and Yale University...
once said in humor that the name Bourke B. Hickenlooper is "exactly the same name an English satirist would choose for an Iowa Republican."Memorial Addresses and Other Tributes in the Congress of the United States on the Life and Contributions of Bourke B. Hickenlooper, p. 6
The Mason City Globe-Gazette
Mason City Globe-Gazette
The Globe Gazette, known locally as the Globe, is a daily morning newspaper published in Mason City, Iowa in the United States. The Globe's circulation is approximately 19,000 for the weekday edition and slightly above 23,000 on Sundays....
in Mason City
Mason City, Iowa
Mason City is the county seat of Cerro Gordo County, Iowa, United States. The population was 28,079 in the 2010 census, a decline from 29,172 in the 2000 census. The Mason City Micropolitan Statistical Area includes all of Cerro Gordo and Worth counties....
noted on Hickenlooper's death that he despaired of obtaining political success because of his name. "The abbreviation used by friends [Hick] was even worse. But Hickenlooper found the secret in kidding about his last name in public, making more jokes about it than [had] his political foes."
Hickenlooper Amendment
The proposed Hickenlooper Amendment, a rider to the 1962 United States foreign aid bill, would have halted aid to any country expropriating U.S. property. The amendment was specifically aimed at CubaCuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
– led by Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...
– which had expropriated U.S.-owned and U.S.-controlled sugar plantations and refineries.
The amendment followed the seizure of three U.S. oil companies in Cuba and Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
. It was also in response to a ruling of the United States Supreme Court that in effect denied the right of an American sugar company to contest the seizure of its holdings by the Castro government.
Hickenlooper viewed his amendment as guaranteeing a U.S. businessman his day in court whenever property is seized by a foreign government. The Supreme Court's ruling, wrote Hickenlooper in 1964, "presumes that any inquiry . . . into the acts of a foreign state will be a matter of embarrassment to the conduct of foreign policy."
The amendment was strongly opposed by the administration of U.S. President John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
, which argued that its passage would threaten all U.S. diplomacy, particularly in Latin America. It was defeated on the Senate floor, 45 to 35.
Wiley Mayne
Wiley Mayne
Wiley Mayne was a four-term Republican United States Congressman from Iowa's 6th congressional district. He was one of several Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee who were defeated in the fall of 1974 after voting against resolutions to impeach President Richard M...
, a U.S. representative from Iowa from 1967 to 1975, said that the Senate erred in rejecting the Hickenlooper Amendment. "Had the amendment been enforced throughout the years, it would appear that we would have been in a far better position in our relations with the less developed nations and certainly . . . in regard to our balance of payments
Balance of payments
Balance of payments accounts are an accounting record of all monetary transactions between a country and the rest of the world.These transactions include payments for the country's exports and imports of goods, services, financial capital, and financial transfers...
. . . . "
Legacy
On October 5, 1961, some 1,200 gathered in Cedar Rapids in a ceremony to honor Hickenlooper's service to the state and the nation. Former Presidents Herbert C. Hoover and Dwight Eisenhower sent accolades. Many of his Senate colleagues came in person. The modest Hickenlooper replied to the tributes: "I wish that the many fine things that have been said about me could be fully accurate. Friendship has a habit of putting a little more glitter on a man than is actually there."Hickenlooper retired to his home in Chevy Chase
Chevy Chase, Maryland
Chevy Chase is the name of both a town and an unincorporated census-designated place in Montgomery County, Maryland. In addition, a number of villages in the same area of Montgomery County include "Chevy Chase" in their names...
, Maryland, where he and his wife had lived since he came to Washington in 1945. He had been planning to relocate to an apartment the month that he died. He complained of abdominal pains and died shortly thereafter over the Labor Day weekend of 1971 while he was visiting friends, the Henry R. Holthusens, in Shelter Island
Shelter Island (town), New York
Shelter Island is a town and island at the eastern end of Long Island in the U.S. state of New York. It forms the tip of Suffolk County and is separated from the rest of the county by water. The population was 2,228 at the 2000 census.-Geography:...
, New York.
Hickenlooper and his wife, the former Verna Bensch, who preceded him in death by some nine months, are interred in a mausoleum
Mausoleum
A mausoleum is an external free-standing building constructed as a monument enclosing the interment space or burial chamber of a deceased person or persons. A monument without the interment is a cenotaph. A mausoleum may be considered a type of tomb or the tomb may be considered to be within the...
in the Cedar Memorial Cemetery in Cedar Rapids. The couple had two children, David Hickenlooper, who resided in Bloomfield
Bloomfield, Iowa
Bloomfield is a city in Davis County, Iowa, United States. The population was 2,601 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Davis County.-Geography:Bloomfield is located in the southeastern part of Iowa near the Missouri border....
, Iowa, at the time of his parents' death, and Jane H. Oberlin, the wife of Russell Oberlin of Des Moines
Des Moines, Iowa
Des Moines is the capital and the most populous city in the US state of Iowa. It is also the county seat of Polk County. A small portion of the city extends into Warren County. It was incorporated on September 22, 1851, as Fort Des Moines which was shortened to "Des Moines" in 1857...
.
Hickenlooper was not the longest-serving popularly elected U.S. senator from Iowa. Charles Grassley surpassed Hickenlooper's four terms with his fifth election in 2004 and his sixth in 2010. William B. Allison
William B. Allison
William Boyd Allison was an early leader of the Iowa Republican Party, who represented northeastern Iowa for four consecutive terms in the U.S. House before representing his state for six consecutive terms in the U.S. Senate...
served thirty-five years, but his service came during the period in which the state legislatures chose senators.
Hickenlooper's name was on an Iowa ballot nineteen times, including primaries
Primary election
A primary election is an election in which party members or voters select candidates for a subsequent election. Primary elections are one means by which a political party nominates candidates for the next general election....
and general elections; he won seventeen of his races.
He lost his first attempt on the ballot in 1932 in a bid for county attorney
County attorney
A county attorney in many areas of the United States is the chief legal officer for a county or local judicial district. It is usually an elected position...
of Linn County
Linn County, Iowa
-2010 census:The 2010 census recorded a population of 211,226 in the county, with a population density of . There were 92,251 housing units, of which 86,134 were occupied.-2000 census:...
in eastern Iowa. He lost the lieutenant governor's race in 1936. He also lost the 1938 Republican primary for lieutenant governor, but the nominee chosen, Harry B. Thompson of Muscatine
Muscatine, Iowa
Muscatine is a city in Muscatine County, Iowa, United States. The population was 22,886 in the 2010 census, an increase from 22,697 in the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Muscatine County...
, withdrew, and the Republican state convention instead placed Hickenlooper on the general election ballot. He never lost another election, his final victory being the 1962 Senate election.
The Cedar Rapids Gazette described Hickenlooper as having had "a keen sense of humor, [was] a staunch defender of the private enterprise system, an advocate of a farm economy unfettered by government controls, and an opponent of excessive spending both at home and abroad. . . . Indeed, his was an enviable record that will serve as an inspiration to all Iowans with political aspirations."
Hickenlooper's Senate colleague John C. Stennis
John C. Stennis
John Cornelius Stennis was a U.S. Senator from the state of Mississippi. He was a Democrat who served in the Senate for over 41 years, becoming its most senior member by his retirement.- Early life :...
, a Mississippi
Mississippi
Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...
Democrat, said that he regarded Hickenlooper "as one of the most valuable men we had in this body. I never saw him go off the deep end on anything without thinking the matter out, and I never saw him lose his patience though I have seen him under a lot of pressure. . . .
On Hickenlooper's death, U.S. President Richard M. Nixon, whom Hickenlooper vigorously supported, issued a telegram referring to the former senator's "unwavering devotion to the public trust and his inspiring love of America. We will always remember him with special admiration and affection, and our sentiments will be shared by a grateful public. His career was crowded with proofs of his determination to serve the best interests of his constituents and of the country. These accomplishments are etched for all time in the annals of our legislative history and in the hearts of the people he served. . . ."