Representative Gardner Cowles View All Years

GARDNER COWLES, SR., publisher, banker and legislator, died at his home in Des Moines, Iowa, on his eighty-fifth birthday, February 28, 1946; born at Oskaloosa, Iowa, on February 28, 1861, the son of a Methodist minister; attended Penn college at Oskaloosa, Grinnell college at Grinnell, and Wesleyan college at Mount Pleasant; established himself at Algona, Iowa, becoming superintendent of schools and part owner of the Algona Republican; entered the loan business, became a stockholder and officer of ten northwest Iowa banks and acquired a large acreage of Iowa farm land; served in the Iowa legislature from 1899 to 1903 as representative from Kossuth county; organized the block of Republican members who obtained the election of Gov. John H. Gear as United States senator over Albert B. Cummins in the Twenty-eighth General Assembly; purchased control of the Des Moines Register with Harvey Ingham in 1903; removed to Des Moines and later acquired the Des Moines Tribune, Iowa Capital and Des Moines News, combining same with the Register, which has since dominated the Des Moines newspaper field; a decade ago relinquished direct management of the newspaper property to his sons, John and Gardner, Jr., who subsequently obtained controlling interest in Minneapolis papers and established Look Magazine.

In 1932 Mr. Cowles was appointed a director of the Reconstruction Finance corporation, serving during the Hoover administration; established and endowed the Gardner Cowles Foundation to aid Iowa colleges and charitable institutions, including in its gifts during his lifetime a library building at Drake University, a dormitory at Grinnell college, a convalescent home for crippled children in Des Moines and funds for a new negro community center in Des Moines in honor of the late Wendell Willkie; served several times as lay delegate to the Methodist Episcopal international conference, and declined to seek further political preferment or connection with business institutions other than his newspaper, which during the ownership and management of himself and sons became one of the leading publications in the midwest, and operating several broadcasting radio stations. Mr. Cowles is survived by his widow, Florence Call Cowles, three sons, John Cowles president of the Minneapolis Star-Journal and Tribune, at Minneapolis, Gardner Cowles, Jr., president of the Des Moines Register and Tribune, Look Magazine and the Cowles Broadcasting company, and Russell Cowles, a talented painter of New York City, and three daughters, Mrs. David Kruidenier of Des Moines, Mrs. James Lecron of Berkley, California, and Mrs. Bertha Quarton of Cedar Rapids, Iowa.