Irving, Theodore Leonard, 1898-1962

Theodore Leonard Irving (March 24, 1898 – March 8, 1962) was an American labor leader and politician. A member of the Democratic Party, he notably served as the U.S. Representative from Missouri's 4th congressional district from 1949 to 1953.

Born in St. Paul, Ramsey County, Minnesota, Irving moved with his parents to a farm in North Dakota. He attended the public schools of North Dakota before working for a railroad as a boy and during the First World War. He left the railroad to become manager of a theater in Montana. He later moved to California and was manager of a hotel before settling in Jackson County, Missouri in 1934 and was employed as a construction worker and later became a representative of the American Federation of Labor.

Irving was elected as a Democrat to the Eighty-first and Eighty-second Congresses (January 3, 1949 – January 3, 1953). He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1952 to the Eighty-third Congress and was defeated for the Democratic nomination in 1954 to the Eighty-fourth Congress. Labor organizer and later president of a labor union in Kansas City, Missouri. He died in Washington, D.C. while on a business trip there and was interred in Mount Moriah Cemetery in Kansas City.