Dan Kuykendall

Dan Kuykendall (1973)

Dan Heflin Kuykendall (born July 9, 1924 in Cherokee , San Saba County , Texas , †  June 12, 2008 in Memphis , Tennessee ) was an American politician . Between 1967 and 1975 he represented the state of Tennessee in the US House of Representatives .

Career

Dan Kuykendall attended public schools in his Texan homeland. During the Second World War he was a first lieutenant pilot in the US Army Air Corps between 1942 and 1945 . He then studied at Texas A&M University until 1947 . He then worked for the wholesale chain Procter & Gamble . For this company he initially worked in Corpus Christi and Houston . Then he was transferred to Memphis, Tennessee, also on behalf of his employer. There he began a political career as a member of the Republican Party . In 1963 and 1964 he was vice party chairman in Shelby County . In 1964, Kuykendall ran unsuccessfully for the US Senate : he was defeated by the Democratic incumbent Albert Gore with 46:54 percent of the vote. In 1965 and 1966 he served on a committee to review Memphis city laws.

In the 1966 congressional election , Kuykendall was elected to the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC in the ninth constituency of Tennessee , where he succeeded George W. Grider on January 31, 1967 . This made him the first Republican since 1875 to represent this district in Congress . After three re-elections, he was able to complete four legislative terms there until January 3, 1975. These were shaped by the events of the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement . Since 1973 Kuykendall represented the eighth district of his state as the successor to Ed Jones . He was considered a very conservative and loyal supporter of Richard Nixon . He remained loyal to the president in the 1974 Watergate affair . This behavior was one of the reasons for his electoral defeat, albeit a razor thin one.

After retiring from the US House of Representatives Dan Kuykendall lived for many years in Bethesda ( Maryland ). In 2002 he returned to Memphis, where he died on June 12, 2008 after a long illness.

Web links

• Dan Kuykendall in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)

• Dan Kuykendall in the database of Find a Grave (English)