Alvin Morell Bentley

Alvin Morell Bentley

Alvin Morell Bentley (born August 30, 1918 in Portland , Maine , †  April 10, 1969 in Tucson , Arizona ) was an American politician . Between 1953 and 1961 he represented the state of Michigan in the US House of Representatives .

Career

Alvin Bentley attended the Southern Pines High School in North Carolina until 1934 and then until 1936 the Asheville Prep School , also in the state of North Carolina. He then studied until 1940 at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor . Bentley finished his education with a degree at Turner's Diplomatic School in Washington . Then he began to work in the diplomatic service of the federal government. In the following years he worked as a diplomat in Mexico , Colombia , Hungary and Italy . After his return in March 1950, he worked for the Foreign Ministry . In the same year he resigned because he did not agree with President Harry S. Truman's foreign policy .

After retiring from the diplomatic service, Bentley moved to Owosso , Michigan. Politically, he was a member of the Republicans , whose regional party conventions in Michigan he attended between 1950 and 1952. In business, he became Vice President of the Lake Huron Broadcasting Co. in Saginaw in 1952 . He was also a director of the Mitchell-Bentley Corp. In the congressional elections of 1952 he was elected to the US House of Representatives in Washington in the eighth constituency of Michigan, where he succeeded Fred L. Crawford , whom he had beaten in the primary on January 3, 1953 . After three re-elections, he was able to complete four legislative terms in Congress by January 3, 1961 . During this time, a shooting occurred in the Capitol on March 1, 1954 , when Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire on the sitting MPs from a gallery in the House of Representatives. Bentley was one of five members of Congress injured: he was shot in the chest; he survived with severe wounds.

In 1960, Bentley decided not to run for the US House of Representatives again. Instead, he ran unsuccessfully for the US Senate : He was defeated by the Democratic incumbent Patrick V. McNamara . In 1961 and 1962 he was a delegate to a meeting to revise the Michigan constitution. In 1962 he applied unsuccessfully to return to Congress. Since 1966 Bentley was a board member of the University of Michigan, for which he had established the Alvin M. Bentley Foundation in 1961, which supports various projects at the university. Alvin Bentley died on April 10, 1969 in Tucson and was buried in Owosso.

Web links

• Alvin Morell Bentley in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)

• Alvin Morell Bentley in the database of Find a Grave (English)