[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 97 (Thursday, June 27, 1996)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1200-E1201]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      CELEBRATING IOWA'S BIRTHDAY

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. JAMES A. LEACH

                                of iowa

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, June 27, 1996

  Mr. LEACH. Mr. Speaker, I rise to invite my colleagues and their 
families to become honorary Iowans for the next few weeks as Iowa and 
its sons and daughters celebrate our State's 150th birthday. Come to 
the Smithsonian's annual Folklife Festival on the Mall to see what 
Iowans with midwestern understatement, are so proud of.
  You will discover Iowa is a State of immigrants who have come 
together to make a singularly diverse community.
  Our first citizens immigrated to Iowa across a land bridge joining 
North America with Asia and eventually became members of the 
approximately 17 different Indian tribes that resided in the State at 
various times in its early history. The Indian word meaning ``the 
beautiful land'' both describes the State and gave it its name.
  Iowa's Sauk and Mesquaki tribes were among the most powerful tribes 
in the upper Mississippi and legend has it that the famous Sauk chief 
Black Hawk's courageous and intelligent leadership of his people 
contributed to Iowa becoming known as the ``Hawkeye State.''
  Although it is thought Spanish explorers may have reached Iowa first 
from the south, and earliest Europeans known to have visited what would 
become the State were the French explorers Father Jacques Marquette and 
Louis Joliet. They were followed by immigrants from Germany, Sweden, 
Norway, Holland, and Great Britain.
  In their turn came people from Ireland, Austria, Italy, and 
Czechoslovakia.
  Iowa entered the Union officially on December 28, 1846, as a free 
State, and prior to the Civil War African-Americans found the State a 
haven as part of the Underground Railway carrying them from slavery to 
freedom. Many African-Americans would settle in southeastern Iowa, most 
notably in Buxton, a community of almost 5,000 that was over 50 percent 
African-American. Buxton's social and economic institutions were fully 
integrated decades before the country would begin to make the effort to 
become so and many of the town's professionals were African-American.
  Although far from the great battles of the Civil War, Iowa 
contributed disproportionately to the Union cause in the conflict. More 
than 76,000 Iowans, more per capita than any other State, served in the 
war. One out of five of the Iowans who enlisted lost their life in the 
course of the war.
  Iowa perennially leads the Nation in literacy, school achievement 
tests and quality of life polls. Its vigorous economy has a sound basis 
in agri-business, small to medium manufacturing and a growing financial 
services sector. But it is the State's people that are Iowa's most 
important product.
  Herbert Hoover was a renowned engineer mining whose Presidency 
preceded the onset of the great depression. His humanitarian relief 
efforts, both as Chair of the American Relief Commission and U.S. Food 
Administrator on the War Trade Council during World War I, as co-
founder of CARE and UNICEF, and as a leader of U.S. food relief efforts 
after World War II, are credited with saving hundreds of millions of 
lives.
  Henry Wallace, an agronomist who helped develop hybrid corn, served 
as Secretary of Agriculture and then Vice President to Franklin Delano 
Roosevelt. An exemplar of this country's great liberal political 
tradition, Wallace ran for President in 1948 as one of the most 
significant third party candidates in American history.
  Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt's chief-of-staff and personal emissary to 
Great Britain at the beginning of the war and later to Stalin at its 
conclusion was an Iowa native.
  So was Mamie Doud Eisenhower. Richard Nixon was stationed at the 
Naval Air Station at Ottumwa, IO, hometown of MASH's Radar O'Riley, and 
Ronald Reagan got his first job as a sportscaster in my hometown of 
Davenport.
  Iowa is justly proud of its accomplishments in scientific research. 
Norman Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work on new types of 
wheat and in the process did as much to alleviate world hunger as 
anyone in this century.
  George Washington Carver graduated from Iowa's Simpson College and 
did his graduate work at Iowa State University.
  John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry invented the computer at Iowa State 
University. Grinnell College graduate Robert Noyce, who founded Intel 
Corp., is considered the coinventer of the computer chip.
  James Van Allen, an astrophysicist at the University of Iowa, 
discovered the radiation belts circling the earth that bear his name. 
Another pioneer of the final frontier, Captain James Tiberius Kirk of 
the Starship Enterprise was born in Riverside, IA.
  At the University of Iowa's magnificent medical research facility, 
researchers such as Drs. Antonio Damasio and Nancy Andreasen have 
looked inward rather than outward, using computer images derived from 
electron microscopes, instead of the magnified pictures caught through 
the mirrors of a telescope, to do groundbreaking work in mapping the 
human brain and studying its complexities. Illnesses from psychotic 
disorders to Alzheimer's disease can be better controlled and 
eventually cured because of their efforts.
  In the leadership of business and industry, Iowa boasts of such sons 
as Frederick Maytag, inventor and manufacturer of the appliances that 
have put so many repairmen on the shelf, and John L. Lewis, the founder 
of the United Mine Workers who did so much to humanize the conditions 
in that industry.
  In the law, Iowa was the first State in the Union to admit a woman to 
the practice of law, Arabella Mansfield, in 1869. Iowa University's Law 
School was the first public law school to graduate a woman, Mary Beth 
Hickey, in 1873.
  As for the environment, Iowans such as J. ``Ding'' Darling and 
Frederick Leopold brought early awareness of the planet's fragility.
  The arts have always been at the center of Iowa's life. The 
Czechoslovakian composer Anton Dvorak spent summers in Spillville and 
wrote his symphony ``From the New World'' there. Since then, Iowa has 
given such classical voices as those of Simon Estes, Emmy Award winner 
Mary Beth Peil, and Dame Margaret Roberti, to the world's stages. 
Roberti, a.k.a. Margaret Jean Nobis, opened the season at La Scala more 
times than Maria Callas and sang the lead in more Verdi operas than 
anyone in operatic history. She is the only American opera singer ever 
knighted by the Italian Government.
  Jazz immortal Bix Beiderbecke also was from Iowa, as was bandleader 
Glenn Miller, singer Andy Williams, the original music man--Meredith 
Willson--and, for a time, the Violist, Sir William Primrose.
  Grant Wood was born in Iowa and made the people and landscapes of his 
home State famous as he pioneered American regionalist art. The 
printmaker Mauricio Lasansky found a home at the University of Iowa. 
His haunting depictions of the Holocaust have helped keep alive the 
memory of the millions lost in Nazi death camps.
  Iowans have always loved the written and spoken word. The University 
of Iowa has long been home to the world famous Creative Writers 
Workshop, founded by the poet Paul Eagle. The novelists Flannery 
O'Connor and John Irving among others too numerous to mention chose to 
live for a time in Iowa City and finished further workshop 
participation.
  Iowa also claims the novelists MacKinlay Kantor and Wallace Stegner, 
as well as the playwright David Rabe. And two recent Pulitzer Prize 
winners, Jane Smiley and Jorie Graham, teach at our State universities, 
the former at Iowa State, the latter at the University of Iowa.
  As for the press, journalists like Hugh Sidey, Harry Reasoner, Tom 
Brokaw, George Mills and Don Kaul have ennobled their profession with 
common sense, historical perspective, and thoughtful wit.
  The actors Cloris Leachman and Marion Morrison--better know as that 
icon of American manhood John Wayne--are from Iowa, as is Donna Reed 
and the original superman, George Reeves.
  John Ringling and his brothers ran away from Iowa to found a circus, 
and Johnny Carson is an Iowan familiar to a generation of insomniacs.
  Jack Trice, Nile Kinnick, Bob Feller, Roger Craig, Dan Gable, and 
Gayle Hopkins are just a few of the world class athletes Iowa has 
produced.
  Where to put Buffalo Bill Cody on a list of eminent Iowans is 
unclear, but he certainly belongs there. So do the Friedman twins from 
Sioux City, who, writing as Abigail Van Buren and Ann Landers, have 
touched the lives of millions of Americans.
  In the final analysis, making lists like this is fun, if dangerous. 
Invariably many who belong on it are overlooked.

[[Page E1201]]

  Moreover, Iowans know that such lists are ultimately beside the 
point. They understand that the important people in all of our lives 
are the family members, friends, and neighbors who make our communities 
home. What Iowa is for its citizens who have gathered here in 
Washington and who will gather throughout the State this year for 
similar events is a celebration of Mid-American values of home and 
country.
  Our country's greatness resides in no small part in the particular 
virtues of each of the 50 States that are the pluribus that make our 
unum. This summer, on the Capitol Mall and in our cities and towns, 
Iowa is celebrating its unique contribution to our Untied States. All 
are welcome to join in.

                          ____________________