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Permanent LinkRepresentative Willard Lee Eaton View All Years
HON. WILLARD LEE EATON.
MR. SPEAKER—Your committee appointed to draft resolutions commemorating the life, character and public services of the Honorable Willard Lee Eaton of Osage, Iowa, a late member of the House, beg leave to report the following memorial:
Willard Lee Eaton, twenty-eighth speaker of the House of Representatives, died at his home at Osage, June 7, 1911. He was born in Delhi, Delaware county, Iowa, October 13, 1848, and was hence in the sixty-third year of a useful life when death claimed him. His father, Gen. Ariel K. Eaton, was a leading man in early Iowa, and was a member of this House in the Third and Fourth General Assemblies and thus took part in framing the Iowa Code of 1851. Young Eaton was educated in the common schools and Cedar Valley Seminary. In 1872 he was made LL. B. in the law department of the State University. He practiced his profession at Osage and served as county attorney of Mitchell county one term. He was mayor of Osage three terms. In 1897 he was elected to represent the county of Mitchell in the House, and was twice re-elected. In 1902 he was chosen speaker, the second native of Iowa to attain to that position. He gave eminent satisfaction as a presiding officer, as he had been useful as a member. In 1906 he was elected a mmber of the board of railroad commissioners, worthily performing the mixed administrative and judicial duties thereof. His labors there wore upon his health, and he willingly retired at the end of one term, soon thereafter to pass from earth.
One, himself a member of the legal profession for three score years, said of him during his lifetime: “Mr. Eaton is a man of very decided superior abilities, and with a liberal literary education and a thorough legal course, it is not strange that with his industry and excellent character, he should have attained, as he has, a high position at the bar. No man in his district, stands higher in these respects than does Mr. Eaton. By heredity he came legitimately to these excellences.”
Resolved, That the House of Representatives presents this tribute to the memory of a faithful public servant and mourns that a life so useful was not longer spared to the community and the state that he was so well calculated to serve.
A. BARTLE,
FRED W. JONES,
T. A. KINGLAND,
Committee.
Adopted April 17, 1913.