- Fred Schwengel
Frederick Delbert Schwengel (
May 28 ,1906 -April 1 ,1993 ) was a Republican U.S. Representative from southeasternIowa .Personal background
Born on a farm near
Sheffield, Iowa , Schwengel attended the rural schools in West Fork Township and high schools in Chapin andSheffield, Iowa . He graduated from Northeast Missouri Teachers College atKirksville, Missouri in 1930, and attended graduate school at theUniversity of Iowa in Iowa City from 1933 to 1935.To this day, Truman State University displays a collection of Schwengel's personal collection of Abraham Lincoln historical artifacts that were donated by Schwengel's wife after his death in 1993.
He served as athletic coach and instructor of history and political science in public schools of
Shelbina, Missouri and Kirksville, Missouri from 1930 to 1937. He engaged in the insurance business inDavenport, Iowa from 1937 to 1954.He served in the
Missouri National Guard from 1929 to 1936.tate offices
Schwengel was elected to the
Iowa House of Representatives in 1944, serving five consecutive terms, from 1945 to 1955. He also served as member of the Iowa Development Commission from 1949 to 1955.Congress
In 1954, the Congressman in Schwengel's district (
Iowa's 1st congressional district ),Thomas E. Martin , ran for theU.S. Senate . Schwengel ran won the Republican nomination for the seat, ["Schwengel is Winner in Close Race," Muscatine Journal and News-Tribune, 1954-06-08 at 1.] and easily defeated John J. O'Connor in the general election. He successfully won re-election in the following four elections. However, in the 1964 Democratic landslide, Schwengel (like all but one of Iowa's Republican U.S. House members) was defeated. He lost to University of Iowa political science ProfessorJohn R. Schmidhauser by fewer than 4,000 votes. But Schmidhauser, like many members of the 1964 freshman class, served only one term; in 1966 Schwengel ran again for his former seat and defeated Schmidhauser by fewer than 5,000 votes, then defeated him again in 1968 by a wider margin.In 1970 Schwengel narrowly defeated Iowa legislator
Edward Mezvinsky by only 765 votes. Redistricting before the 1972 election shifted several Republican areas out of the 1st district, so when Mezvinsky ran against Schwengel a second time in 1972, he won with 53 percent of the vote. In all, Schwengel served eight terms in Congress.After Congress
Schwengel had founded the Capitol Historical Society in 1962, and continued to serve as its president after his defeat, until 1993. He also was a founder and president of the Republican Heritage Foundation.
Schwengel died on
April 1 ,1993 , inArlington, Virginia .References
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
