Hickenlooper, Bourke B. (Bourke Blakemore), 1896-1971

Senator.

State of Iowa representative (1934-1937); lieutenant governor (1939-1942); governor (1943-1944); and U.S. senator (1945-1969).

Bourke Blakemore Hickenlooper (1896-1971) was a World War I veteran commissioned as a 1st Lt. with service in France in the 339th Field Artillery. Upon returning to Iowa, he completed a BS at Iowa State College in 1919 and, three years later, received a Juris Doctorate at the State University of Iowa. He practiced law in Cedar Rapids, Iowa until he became governor in 1943. As a wartime governor, Hickenlooper participated in several key conferences of midwest governors, particularly the Republican governors conference at Mackinac in 1943. Here he met party leaders including Arthur A. Vandenberg, Thomas E. Dewey, John W. Bricker, Wendell Willkie, and others who recognized him as a young talent with the potential to rise in national politics. During the Republican governors conference in St. Louis in August, 1944, the St. Louis Star-Times, commented on the "rapidly rising political star of 48-year-old, energetic Bourke B. Hickenlooper, governor of Iowa" who had gained attention as one of Governor Dewey's "bright young men." As a freshman senator, Hickenlooper's committee assignments were no more--or less--spectacular than the average incoming member of the minority party; however, within two years, he was assigned a seat on the Foreign Relations Committee, and had become chairman of the newly formed Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. By 1949, he had been seated on the Agriculture and Forestry Committee making him a member of three influential Senate committees. He retained the Foreign Relations and Joint Committee assignments until his retirement from the Senate.