Bourke B. Hickenlooper - Legacy

Legacy

On October 5, 1961, some 1,200 gathered in Cedar Rapids in a ceremony to honor Hickenlooper's service to the state and the nation. Former Presidents Herbert C. Hoover and Dwight Eisenhower sent accolades. Many of his Senate colleagues came in person. The modest Hickenlooper replied to the tributes: "I wish that the many fine things that have been said about me could be fully accurate. Friendship has a habit of putting a little more glitter on a man than is actually there."

Hickenlooper retired to his home in Chevy Chase, Maryland, where he and his wife had lived since he came to Washington in 1945. He had been planning to relocate to an apartment the month that he died. He complained of abdominal pains and died shortly thereafter over the Labor Day weekend of 1971 while he was visiting friends, the Henry R. Holthusens, in Shelter Island, New York.

Hickenlooper and his wife, the former Verna Bensch, who preceded him in death by some nine months, are interred in a mausoleum in the Cedar Memorial Cemetery in Cedar Rapids. The couple had two children, David Hickenlooper, who resided in Bloomfield, Iowa, at the time of his parents' death, and Jane H. Oberlin, the wife of Russell Oberlin of Des Moines.

Hickenlooper was not the longest-serving popularly elected U.S. senator from Iowa. Charles Grassley surpassed Hickenlooper's four terms with his fifth election in 2004 and his sixth in 2010. William B. Allison served thirty-five years, but his service came during the period in which the state legislatures chose senators.

Hickenlooper's name was on an Iowa ballot nineteen times, including primaries and general elections; he won seventeen of his races. He lost his first attempt on the ballot in 1932 in a bid for county attorney of Linn County in eastern Iowa. He lost the lieutenant governor's race in 1936. He also lost the 1938 Republican primary for lieutenant governor, but the nominee chosen, Harry B. Thompson of Muscatine, withdrew, and the Republican state convention instead placed Hickenlooper on the general election ballot. He never lost another election, his final victory being the 1962 Senate election.

The Cedar Rapids Gazette described Hickenlooper as having had "a keen sense of humor, a staunch defender of the private enterprise system, an advocate of a farm economy unfettered by government controls, and an opponent of excessive spending both at home and abroad. . . . Indeed, his was an enviable record that will serve as an inspiration to all Iowans with political aspirations."

Hickenlooper's Senate colleague John C. Stennis, a Mississippi Democrat, said that he regarded Hickenlooper "as one of the most valuable men we had in this body. I never saw him go off the deep end on anything without thinking the matter out, and I never saw him lose his patience though I have seen him under a lot of pressure. . . .

On Hickenlooper's death, U.S. President Richard M. Nixon, whom Hickenlooper vigorously supported, issued a telegram referring to the former senator's "unwavering devotion to the public trust and his inspiring love of America. We will always remember him with special admiration and affection, and our sentiments will be shared by a grateful public. His career was crowded with proofs of his determination to serve the best interests of his constituents and of the country. These accomplishments are etched for all time in the annals of our legislative history and in the hearts of the people he served. . . ."