Murdock, John Robert, 1885-1972

Arizona educator and Representative to the U.S. Congress from Arizona, 1935-1953.

John Robert Murdock was born in 1885. He graduated from the State Teachers College in Kirksville, Missouri in 1912, and from the University of Iowa at Iowa City in 1925. He did graduate work at the University of Arizona at Tucson and the University of California at Berkeley. He served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Arizona, from 1937 to 1953. He died in 1972.

U.S. Representative from Arizona, 1936-1953.

Biographical note: U.S. Congressman from Arizona; John Murdock was an instructor, then dean from 1933 to 1937, at Tempe Normal School, which became Arizona State University. He was elected to Congress in 1937 and served until 1953. His wife, Myrtle M. Murdock, had a Ph.D. and a private cubicle at the Library of Congress. She wrote a series of educational pamphlets for school children and the Arizona Daily Star published a weekly series of her letters home to Arizona.

John Robert Murdock, educator and US Representative from Arizona, was born on April 20, 1885 near Lewistown, Missouri. He attended local public schools and graduated from the Missouri State Teacher's College at Kirksville in 1912. After teaching in public schools from 1908 to 1914 he accepted an appointment as an instructor in history and political science at the Tempe Normal School. In 1933, Murdock was named Dean of the Arizona State Teachers College at Tempe.

Murdock was elected to the US House of Representatives as a Democrat in November of 1936 and served continuously until January of 1953, having been defeated in the fall 1952 elections. He was a specialist in water issues with particular expertise in water desalinization. Murdock died in Phoenix on February 14, 1972.