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Permanent LinkSenator James L. Brookhart View All Years
JAMES L. BROOKHART
James L. Brookhart, member of the Senate of Washington and Henry counties during the Thirty-eighth, Thirty-ninth, Fortieth, Fortieth extra and Forty-first sessions, who died at his home in Washington, Iowa on November 11, 1926, was born on a farm in Scotland county, Missouri, September 9, 1871; and his childhood was that customary to one of a family of ten children on a middle western farm in those days. There was much of hardship in it.
At the age of seventeen years he left his father’s farm, then in Van Buren county, Iowa, and began teaching school. During the summer he worked on the farm. He was truly a self-made man, endowed with a desire for knowledge and an ambition to serve the public. He came to Washington in 1894 and put himself through the Washington Academy, graduating therefrom in 1896, after which he became principal of the Wallace school. While thus engaged he read law in the office of his brother, Smith W. Brookhart, and he fitted himself for the practice of his profession. In 1898 he was admitted to the bar of this county and the same year was appointed county attorney to fill out the unexpired term of his brother during the latter’s service in the Spanish-American War. In 1918 he was elected State Senator, which office he held until his death, and in the Legislature he was very active in every movement which he believed to be in the interest of the general public.
James L. Brookhart has left behind him an enviable memory with those of us whose privilege it has been to work with him. Always courteous, friendly and dignified in the court room or Senate chamber, he was honorable, straightforward and absolutely dependable in his business relations with his brother lawyers and lawmakers. Any professional or lawmaking undertaking of his was scrupulously adhered to without any equivocation or evasion whatsoever, and diligent and resourceful in the defense of his district’s interest. His loss will be deeply felt by the community and state as well as by his family to whose interests he was so devoted.
Therefore, Be It Resolved, That in the death of James L. Brookhart, the state of Iowa has lost a faithful, able and esteemed citizen whose passing was untimely and whose death we mourn. To his bereaved wife and daughter we tender our deepest sympathy and share with them in their loss of a kind and indulgent husband, a tender, loving and thoughtful father, and in our loss of our friend and fellow lawmaker.
WILLIAM CARDEN,
A. J. SHINN,
GEO. CLEARMAN,
Committee.