Ike Skelton

Ike Skelton

Isaac Newton "Ike" Skelton IV (born December 20, 1931 in Lexington , Missouri , † October 28, 2013 in Arlington , Virginia ) was an American politician of the Democratic Party . From 1977 to 2011 he represented Missouri's fourth congressional electoral district in the US House of Representatives . This covers the west of the state and most of its capital Jefferson City .

career

After attending the military academy in his hometown Lexington, Skelton first studied at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland . In 1953 he graduated from the University of Missouri in Columbia the Bachelor of Arts , 1956 Bachelor of Laws . He then worked as a freelance attorney before becoming a prosecutor in Lafayette County in 1957 . From 1961 to 1963, he served as special assistant to the Missouri Attorney General . Between 1971 and 1977 he was a member of the state's Senate before being first elected to Congress .

From 2007 to 2011, Skelton served as chair of the influential Committee on Armed Services . He had previously been the highest-ranking Democrat on this committee since 1998. He also ran for re- election in the 2010 elections, but was defeated by the Republican Vicky Hartzler with 45:50 percent of the vote and had to leave Congress on January 3, 2011.

Private life

His wife Susan Anding Skelton died on August 23, 2005; the two had been married for 44 years. On November 26 of the same year, Skelton and two colleagues, Congressmen Tim Murphy and James C. Marshall, were injured in a car accident while on an official visit to Iraq. Their vehicle overturned near Baghdad Airport . Skelton and Murphy were then treated at Landstuhl's US Military Hospital .

Web links

Commons : Ike Skelton  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Web presence at the congress
• Ike Skelton in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ike Skelton Dies