Mr. Republican, Charley Hoeven

Sits out there rather comfortably, not in the least ostentatious or showy, not a bit of arrogance in style or positioning or size. I can't help thinking the stone--and even where it stands--purposefully fits and suits the old guy it remembers, a true, old-fashioned pol. U. S. Representative Charles Hoeven, from Sioux County, represented what was then the Eighth District of the state with very little showmanship. Seems to me showmanship held no quarter in his character.

In today's splashy political climate, he wouldn't stand a chance, unless, perhaps, he'd take on the school board for a library book about lesbian parents. That would notch up fan appeal. But Charley wouldn't. Charley was school board president. 

Born in 1895, he was the child of a mixed marriage. His father's people were immigrant Dutch, his mother's immigrant German. He spent his boyhood in Hospers, a village on the seam. When he served, he did so in a fashion that suitably represented all, I'm sure. For forty years he held elective office, in D. C. from 1942-1965. Eleven times he was voted back into the House of Representatives in our nation's capital. Eleven times. Just about made him an institution. He had to have been trusted. Some did call him "Mr. Republican."

That stone up top is his. You have to look close to see the small print below the name. Let me bring it up a bit.

The truth is, you could miss that bottom line. It's light and small and positioned as if it were a footnote. Who knows? For Charlie Hoeven, maybe all those years of service in Washington were little more.

Here's his record, straight from government files. Take a deep breath.

HOEVEN, Charles Bernard, a Representative from Iowa; born in Hospers, Sioux County, Iowa, March 30, 1895; attended the public schools and Alton (Iowa) High School; State University of Iowa at Iowa City, B.A., in 1920 and from its law department, LL.B., 1922; was admitted to the bar in 1922 and commenced practice in Alton, Iowa; during the First World War served as a sergeant, Company D, Three Hundred and Fiftieth Infantry, Eighty-eighth Division, and with the Intelligence Service, First Battalion, in England and France; county attorney of Sioux County, Iowa, 1925-1937; member of the State senate 1937-1941, serving as president pro tempore 1939-1941; temporary and permanent chairman of Iowa Republican State Judicial convention in 1942; delegate to each Iowa State Republican convention from 1925 to 1970 and chairman in 1940; delegate to Republican National Convention, 1964; elected as a Republican to the Seventy-eighth and to the ten succeeding Congresses (January 3, 1943-January 3, 1965); chairman, Republican Conference (Eighty-ninth Congress); was not a candidate for renomination in 1964 to the Eighty-ninth Congress; vice president of savings bank; resided in Orange City, Iowa, where he died November 9, 1980; interment in Nassau Township Cemetery, Alton, Iowa.

Character is more than a string of name plates. Once, in December of 1917, Cpl. Charley Hoeven came home on leave. The Alton Democrat wrote up the story this way:

Corporal Charley Hoeven spent a few days at home here during the week. He is a stalwart looking soldier. He put on twenty pounds weight at Camp Dodge and says the boys have every thing they need in the line of eats. He gave an interesting talk at C. E. meeting Sunday evening in the Presbyterian church.

From a distance, that note may well say as much about Charley Hoeven as his string of political offices.

His days in Washington ended abruptly. Mr. Republican got blind-sided by a gang of young turks who were bound and determined to usher in a new, much-loved, ex-Big Ten footballer named Gerald R. Ford to top leadership, where he'd lead the young guys and not the old fogies. In total secrecy, those young turks pulled off a coup that must have had old Charley's head a-spinning. He was a veteran all right; he was 67 years old. The voters kept him in office, but his party gave him a first-class ticket into retirement. 

A Sioux City thoroughfare is named after him--you'd have to see his name on the signs to know it. That street follows the channel of the Floyd River, which is only right for good old Charley, who probably always thought of home as close by.

His papers leave a historical record, lots of pictures of him with the muck-a-mucks of his day; but if you'd like to visit him anytime soon, you need to pedal down a country road a mile south of Orange City, then go east to Nassau Township's little patch of cemetery. Take the east path in and look for his grave on your right. You'll find it, I'm sure, even though, like Charley, the stone is unassuming.

Charley Hoeven didn't make headlines, like Matt Gaetz or Marjorie Taylor Green, but that's okay. Today, you can't help but think that a little hard-working reserve sounds like a very good thing, in Hospers, Alton, and D. C.