Everett McKinley DIRKSEN, Congress, IL (1896-1969)

DIRKSEN, Everett McKinley, (father-in-law of Howard Baker), a Representative and a Senator from Illinois; born in Pekin, Tazewell County, Ill., January 4, 1896; attended public schools and the University of Minnesota College of Law at Minneapolis; during the First World War served overseas as a private and later as a second lieutenant of Field Artillery 1918-1919; general manager of a dredging company 1922-1925; commissioner of finance of Pekin, Ill., 1927-1931; studied law; admitted to the bar in 1936 and commenced practice in Pekin, Ill.; elected as a Republican to the Seventy-third and to the seven succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1933-January 3, 1949); chairman, Committee on District of Columbia (Eightieth Congress); was not a candidate for renomination in 1948; elected as a Republican to the United States Senate in 1950; reelected in 1956, 1962, and again in 1968, and served from January 3, 1951, until his death in Washington, D.C., September 7, 1969; Republican whip 1957-1959; minority leader 1959-1969; chairman, Joint Committee on Inaugural Arrangements (Ninetieth Congress); lay in state in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, September 9-10, 1969; interment in Glendale Memorial Gardens, Pekin, Ill.

Bibliography

Dictionary of American Biography; American National Biography; Dirksen, Everett M. The Education of a Senator. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998; MacNeil, Neil. Dirksen: Portrait of a Public Man. New York: World Publishing Company, 1970.

Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present