Bourke Blakemore HickenlooperView All Years

BOURKE BLAKEMORE HICKENLOOPER

MR. PRESIDENT: Your committee, appointed to prepare a suitable resolution commemorating the life, character, and public service of the late Honorable Bourke Blakemore Hickenlooper, begs leave to submit the following memorial:

His proud parents named him Bourke Blakemore Hickenlooper when he was born on July 21, 1896, in the small Taylor County town of Blockton in Southwest Iowa. By the time he departed this life seventy-five years later, on September 4, 1971, his unusual, multi-syllabled name was rolling easily off the tongues of those in virtually every Iowa household and the man to whom it belonged had become the “winningest” political figure in the history of Iowa.

When he decided to make politics his career, Bourke Blakemore Hickenlooper realized his rather difficult-to-pronounce name might prove a vote-getting liability unless he found a w ay to change it into an asset. So, as a candidate for lieutenant governor, he went from door-to-door encouraging people to call him just plain “Hick”. Wearing a broad grin he explained the reason why in every nook and cranny of the state by telling about the time, as a small boy, his mother sent him to the drug store in the county seat Bedford.

“I asked for a nickel’s worth of assafetida and told the druggist to charge it,” he’d recount. “He asked me my name. I told him it was Bourke Blakemore Hickenlooper. He asked me to say it again. I did. He said ‘Here sonny, take it. It isn’t worth a nickel to write assafetida and Hickenlooper on the same charge ticket.”

From his rich, rural background, he branched out to win a degree in industrial science from Iowa State and a degree in law from the University of Iowa on his way to becoming the number one Republican on the foreign relations committee of the United States Senate and a confidant of Presidents of both political parties. He served as chairman of the Joint Atomic Energy Committee, was named a representative of the United States to the United Nations General Assembly by President Eisenhower in 1958 and to a congressional team to oversee the South Vietnam elections by President Johnson in 1966.

Only the late Senator William B. Allison, among Iowans, enjoyed a longer record of service in the Senate than Bourke Blakemore Hickenlooper and Senator Allison’s record was made in the days before senators were elected by popular vote.

With his twenty-four years in the Senate, two years as Governor of Iowa, four years as Lieutenant Governor of Iowa, and four years as a State Representative from Linn county, where he established his home and law practice after returning from World War I, Senator Hickenlooper devoted thirty-four years—nearly half his lifetime—to public service.

The people of his native state, together with his colleagues in the United States Congress, held him in high esteem for his devotion to principles, his unswerving loyalty, his unquestioned integrity, and his enviable ability to get along with others. Yes, and for his enduring humility, perhaps best exhibited by the Senator on October 5, 1961 when nearly 1,200 friends from Iowa and around the nation gathered in Cedar Rapids to pay him honor.

Former Presidents Hoover and Eisenhower were among those who sent accolades, which were interspersed with spoken tributes by many of his Senate colleagues who came in person for the grand occasion.

“I wish that the many fine things that have been said about me could be fully accurate,” he responded. “Friendship has a habit of putting a little more glitter on a man than actually is there.”

Bourke Blakemore Hickenlooper’s body rests today in a mausoleum in the Cedar Memorial Chapel of Memories in Cedar Rapids, near that of his beloved wife, Verna, who preceded him in death. A son, David, of Bloomfield, and a daughter, Mrs. Russel L. Oberlin, of Des Moines, survive.

Bourke Blakemore Hickenlooper, truly a tall Iowan among Iowans.

(The foregoing was written by Mr. Frank Nye, Associate Editor of the Cedar Rapids Gazette, at the request of the undersigned committee because of Mr. Nye’s long time association with Senator Hickenlooper and Iowa politics.)

Therefore, Be It Resolved by the Senate of the Sixty-fourth General Assembly of Iowa: That in the passing of the Honorable Bourke Blakemore Hickenlooper, the state has lost an honored citizen and a faithful and useful public servant, and the Senate by this resolution would express its appreciation of his service, and tender its sympathy to the members of his family.

Be It Further Resolved: That a copy of this resolution be spread upon the Journal of the Senate, and that the Secretary of the Senate be directed to forward an enrolled copy to the family of the deceased.

TOM RILEY, Chairman

RALPH W. POTTER

CLOYD E. ROBINSON

Committee

The resolution was unanimously adopted.