Gerald John BOILEAU, Congress, WI (1900-1981)

BOILEAU, Gerald John, a Representative from Wisconsin; born in Woodruff, Oneida County, Wis., January 15, 1900; moved to Minocqua, Oneida County, Wis., in 1909; attended the public and high schools; during the First World War enlisted in the United States Army on February 25, 1918, as a private in the Eleventh Field Artillery, Battery D, and was honorably discharged as a corporal on July 16, 1919, having served twelve months overseas; was graduated from the law department of Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wis., LL.B., 1923; was admitted to the bar the same year and commenced practice in Wausau, Marathon County, Wis.; served as district attorney of Marathon County, Wis., 1926-1931; delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1928; elected as a Republican to the Seventy-second and Seventy-third Congresses and as a Progressive to the Seventy-fourth and Seventy-fifth Congresses (March 4, 1931-January 3, 1939); unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1938 to the Seventy-sixth Congress and for election in 1940 to the Seventy-seventh Congress; resumed the practice of law; elected circuit judge of the sixteenth judicial circuit of Wisconsin in 1942; reelected in 1945, 1951, 1957, and again in 1963 for a six-year term; retired in 1970; appointed to serve as temporary circuit judge in Milwaukee County in 1970, for an unexpired term ending in 1974; resided in Wausau, Wis., until his death January 30, 1981; interment in Restlawn Memorial Park.

Bibliography

Lorence, James J. Gerald J. Boileau and the Progressive-Farmer-Labor Alliance: Politics of the New Deal. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1993.

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