Here are Five (5) 1950’s Autograph Cards Signed by Iowa Statesman
LEO ARTHUR HOEGH
(1908 -
2000)
·
33rd GOVERNOR
OF IOWA 1955-1957,
·
ATTORNEY GENERAL OF IOWA 1953-55,
·
ADMINISTRATOR OF THE FEDERAL CIVIL
DEFENSE ADMINISTRATION APPOINTED BY PRESIDENT EISENHOWER DURING THE COLD WAR
1957-8,
·
DIRECTOR OF THE OFFICE OF CIVIL and
DEFENSE MOBILIZATION 1958-1961, and
·
WWII DECORATED LT. COLONEL IN THE 104th
INFANTRY DIVISION – THE “TIMBERWOLF DIVISION.”
A RARE ADDITION TO
YOUR IOWA POLITICAL and MILITARY HISTORY AUTOGRAPH, MANUSCRIPT & EPHEMERA
COLLECTION!
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH of
the HONORABLE LEO A. HOEGH
Leo Arthur Hoegh (pronounced hoyg; March
30, 1908 – July 15, 2000) was a decorated U.S. Army
officer, lawyer, and politician who served as the 33rd Governor of Iowa from 1955 to 1957.
His record of public service included important
contributions to his home state and to his country. His career in elective
office came to an early end, after his willingness to raise taxes to jump-start
improvements to Iowa's roads and schools alienated his conservative Republican
allies, and handed Democratic gubernatorial nominee Herschel C.
Loveless an issue to exploit.
Personal background
Hoegh's grandfather, Nels Peder Hoegh, left a farm in Denmark in
1866 to search for gold in Colorado. He
invested much of his newfound fortune in farmland in Audubon County,
Iowa, became a community leader, and upon his death left
separate farms for each of his thirteen children.
When Leo was born to Nels' son William in 1908, the
household spoke Danish, and it was not until Leo attended school that he began
to speak English. While his father ran a bank in nearby Elk Horn, Iowa, Leo
decided to become a lawyer. He received a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Iowa in
1929, where
he distinguished himself as a captain of the water polo team
and as the founding president of Gamma Nu Chapter of Pi Kappa Alpha. He
lettered in swimming and was selected for membership in A.F.I., forerunner to
the national honor society, Omicron Delta
Kappa. As Leo graduated from the University of Iowa College of Law in
1932, his father sold all of his assets in an unsuccessful effort to prevent
the Elk Horn bank from failing. Leo started private practice in Chariton, the
county seat of Lucas County in
south central Iowa.
State legislative career
In 1936, Hoegh was elected as a Republican to the first of
his three terms in the Iowa House of Representatives, where he exhibited
leadership and rose successively to become Republican Floor Leader and chairman
of the Judiciary Committee. He also developed "a solid, orthodox
reputation as an unrelenting penny pincher."
World War II service
Hoegh resigned from the Iowa legislature when he was called
up for duty as a junior officer in the Iowa National Guard in 1942. Rising
quickly in the U.S. Army, he
became a lieutenant colonel and the operations officer for the 104th Infantry Division, nicknamed the
Timberwolf Division, and wrote the operations orders that carried the 104th
through to the Rhine and into Germany. For
his gallant action during World War II,
Hoegh received several decorations, including the Bronze Star with
cluster, Croix de Guerre with
palm, and Legion of Honor. It
was during those months that he first came to the attention of General Dwight D.
Eisenhower, then serving as the supreme allied commander. At war's
end, when the 104th linked up with the Soviet forces in Germany, Lieut. Colonel
Hoegh was in a group that flew behind the Soviet lines in a Piper Cub to
establish liaison with Marshal Ivan Konev's
advancing army. He wrote a history of the division, Timberwolf Tracks.
Post-war activities
After the war, Hoegh returned to Iowa to resume his law
practice in Chariton, and was elected to many civic and business leadership
posts. Eager to return to public service at a higher level, he ran in the 1948
Republican primary against incumbent Republican Congressman Karl M. LeCompte.
LeCompte defeated him by a 2-to-1 margin.
Putting himself at odds with the more conservative factions
that controlled the Iowa Republican Party in the decade after the end of the
war, Hoegh became an active supporter of Minnesota Governor Harold Stassen in
his bid for the 1948 Republican nomination for president, and former General Dwight Eisenhower in
his bid for the 1952 Republican nomination for president.
In 1953, he was appointed Iowa Attorney
General by Governor William Beardsley,
filling a position created by Beardsley's appointment of Robert L. Larson to
the Iowa Supreme Court.
There, he earned a reputation as a strict law enforcer, especially of Iowa's
widely ignored law against sale of liquor by the drink.
One term as Iowa
Governor
In 1954, Hoegh was elected Governor of Iowa,
winning a close contest over Democrat Clyde Edsel Herring, son of the former
Iowa Governor and U.S. Senator, Clyde LaVerne
Herring.
As chief executive, he championed the cause of education
and orchestrated a major increase in funding for the state universities and the
public schools. He also worked to improve the state's mental institutions,
changing the focus from custody to caring for and curing the mentally ill. He
urged recognition of the union shop, legislative reapportionment to 'reduce the
control of rural areas over the cities,' funds to promote industrial expansion,
and a reduction in the voting age from 21 to 18. In 1955, he appointed Iowa's
first "Commission to Study Discrimination in Employment." The
Commission's report, issued the following year, identified by name the
employers and supervisors alleged to have discriminated on the basis of race or
religion, and recommended adoption of a state fair employment practices act.
To balance the budget while accomplishing his ambitious
agenda, Hoegh sought to increase revenues by more than $31 million, to be
collected through proposed increases in the taxes on beer, cigarettes and
gasoline, a capital-gains tax and extension of the sales tax to include
services. The Republican-controlled General Assembly approved enough tax
increases to bring in $22 million a year, and Hoegh found himself labelled by
his Democratic opponents as "High-Tax Hoegh." Meanwhile, his support
for a union shop alienated a traditional ally of Iowa Republicans, the Iowa
Manufacturers Association, without disturbing labor's allegiance to the Iowa
Democratic Party.
In his race for re-election in 1956, Hoegh won the
Republican primary but ran behind Democratic opponent Herschel C. Loveless,
mayor of Ottumwa, Iowa. Two weeks before his electoral defeat, Time Magazine
placed Hoegh's face on its cover. The cover story ended with this prediction:
His principal problem is that he has caught the spirit of
an era that is beginning to recognize the need for a resurgence of good local
and state government—and. in doing so. he has perhaps stirred his quiet state
too much. But if he has gone too far too fast, he can take a governor's small
comfort from the conviction that one year—if not this year—his state will
forget the anthills and look with satisfaction on the considerable movements of
home-grown progressive government.
The rest of his career
Hoegh had hardly left the governor's chair, however, when
President Eisenhower named him federal administrator of civil defense in July
1957. One year later, in 1958, Eisenhower appointed Hoegh director of the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization. He
was a member of the National Security Council, and
represented the United States at emergency planning meetings of NATO.
After Eisenhower was replaced by John F. Kennedy,
Hoegh moved into the private sector, heading the backyard bomb-shelter division
of Wonder Building Corporation of Chicago. However, when the Kennedy
Administration elected to stress large-scale, community shelters over backyard
bunkers, interest for such products waned, and
he returned to practicing law.
In 1964, Hoegh moved his law practice to Chipita Park,
Colorado, where he practiced until his retirement in 1985. He died
in Colorado Springs, Colorado in 2000, and was
interred there at the Evergreen Cemetery.
I am a proud member of the Universal Autograph Collectors Club
(UACC), The Ephemera Society of America, the Manuscript Society and the
American Political Items Collectors (APIC) (member name: John Lissandrello). I
subscribe to each organizations' code of ethics and authenticity is guaranteed.
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