Berkley Bedell

Berkley Bedell (2007)

Berkley Warren Bedell (born March 5, 1921 in Spirit Lake , Iowa , † December 7, 2019 in Naples , Florida ) was an American politician ( Democratic Party ). Between 1975 and 1987 he represented the 6th Congressional District of the state of Iowa in the US House of Representatives .

Career

Berkley Bedell attended his home public schools including Spirit Lake High School , which he graduated from in 1939. Between 1940 and 1942 he studied at Iowa State University in Ames . As early as 1937 he had founded Berkley & Co. , which was active in the fishing industry. During the Second World War , Bedell was a first lieutenant and flight instructor in the US Army between 1942 and 1945 . After the war he returned to his fishing company, which now had hundreds of employees and operated internationally. Bedell became a millionaire in the 1960s. Between 1957 and 1962 he served on the education committee of his home ward, Spirit Lake.

Politically, Bedell joined the Democratic Party. In 1972 he ran unsuccessfully against Republican Wiley Mayne for Congress . Between 1972 and 1974 he was a delegate to regional party conventions in Iowa. In 1974 he was elected to the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC in the sixth constituency of Iowa . There he took over from Mayne on January 3, 1975, whom he had defeated in the election. He also benefited from Mayne's behavior during the Watergate affair when he initially voted against impeachment proceedings against President Richard Nixon . After five re-elections Bedell was able to complete six consecutive terms in Congress by January 3, 1987. There he was temporarily a member of a subcommittee of the Small Business Committee . In the 1980s Bedell was one of the main critics of President Ronald Reagan's policies .

In 1986 Bedell declined to run for health reasons. He founded an alternative medicine center and remained interested in political issues. Just as he opposed the Vietnam War in the 1960s , he was also against the Iraq War in 2002 . In the 2008 presidential election, he first supported Chris Dodd and then Barack Obama . Berkley Bedell was married and lived in Spirit Lake, his birthplace, until his death on December 6, 2019.

Web links

• Berkley Bedell in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)