Thomas A. Maloney

:"This article is about the American politician, for the British businessman see Tom Moloney."Thomas A. Maloney (born May 22, 1889 in San Francisco, California - died January 15, 1986 in Belmont, California) was first elected to the California State Senate in 1924. He was reelected in 1927. In 1932 the Federal government instituted the Federal Reapportionment plan. When this happened Senator Maloney decided to run for State Assembly instead of the State Senate. He was elected to represent the 23rd assembly district. He held this position until 1956 when he lost the race for reelection. During his time in the Senate and the Assembly Senator Maloney was elected as Speaker Pro Tempore of the Assembly and appointed to committees handling Constitutional Amendments, Finance and Insurance issues, and Government Organization issues. He gained a reputation for supporting labor, industry and business.

Family

Senator Maloney was the eldest of eighteen children. He was born in 1889 to John Maloney and Julia (Smith) Maloney. The first nine children including Tom were born by Julia, who died when was Tom was still very young. After her death John Maloney quickly remarried and nine more children were added to the family by Tom's stepmother. With so many mouths to feed, money didn't go very far. To make matters worse only a few weeks after Julia's death John was injured while working as a stevedoring on the dock. This left him unable to work as much as he used to. Tom as the oldest went to work at the age of six selling news papers down on the dock. Tom would buy the papers for a nickle and sell them to the dock men for a dime. He would sell these papers all along the dock both before and after school each day. At age eleven Tom began work on the dock scaling boilers on steamships. Latter he worked as a stevedoring and after that in a lumber yard. In 1966 Tom married Ellen Twomey, and they had four children: Tom, Jack, Alice, and Barbara. [Dowling, P.J., (1998). "The Maloney Brothers: The Senator and the Sage" in Irish Californians: Historic, Benevolent, Romantic. San Francisco: Scotwall Associates. (pp. 130-149)]

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