Lewis Williams DOUGLAS, Congress, AZ (1894-1974)

1894-1974

DOUGLAS, Lewis Williams, a Representative from Arizona; born in Bisbee, Cochise County, Ariz., July 2, 1894; attended the public schools and Montclair (N.J.) Academy; was graduated from Amherst (Mass.) College in 1916; attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1916; commissioned as a second lieutenant on August 15, 1917, and assigned to the Three Hundred and Forty-seventh Regiment, Field Artillery; promoted to first lieutenant and served overseas as assistant, G-3 staff, Ninety-first Division, until discharged on February 18, 1919; instructor of history at Amherst College in 1920; engaged in mining and general business; member of the Arizona State house of representatives 1923-1925; elected as a Democrat to the Seventieth Congress; reelected to the three succeeding Congresses and served from March 4, 1927, until his resignation March 4, 1933, before the commencement of the Seventy-third Congress; appointed Director of the Budget by President Franklin D. Roosevelt; took the oath of office on March 7, 1933, and served until August 31, 1934, when he resigned; vice president and member of the board of a chemical company 1934-1938; principal and vice chancellor of McGill University, Montreal, Canada, from January 1938 to December 1939; president of an insurance company from 1940-1947, and chairman of the board on leave of absence, 1947-1959; deputy administrator of the War Shipping Administration from May 1942 to March 1944; United States Ambassador to Great Britain 1947-1950; director, General Motors Corporation, 1944-1965; chairman and director, Southern Arizona Bank & Trust Company, 1949-1966; appointed by the President to head Government Study of Foreign Economic Problems, 1953; member, President’s Task Force on American Indians, 1966-1967; died in Tucson, Ariz., March 7, 1974; cremated.

Bibliography

Browder, Robert Paul, and Thomas G. Smith. Independent; A Biography of Lewis W. Douglas. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986; Smith, Thomas G. “Lewis Douglas, Arizona Politics and the Colorado River Controversy.” Arizona and the West 22 (Summer 1980): 125-62.

Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present