Wickersham, Victor Eugene, U.S. House of Representatives from Oklahoma (1941-1947), (1949-1957), (1961-1965), 1906-1988
Person
Biographical:
Victor Eugene Wickersham was born on a farm near Lone Rock in Baxter County, Arkansas, on February 9, 1906. With his family, he moved to Greer County, Oklahoma, in 1915, where he attended public schools. At eighteen, he began two years' employment in the county clerk's office. He was elected Greer County clerk in 1926 and served in that capacity until 1935. In that year, he was named chief clerk for the state board of public affairs, serving for one year. He remained in the capital city as an Oklahoma City building contractor from 1937 to 1938, when he began selling insurance for the John Hancock Life Insurance Company. After the death of Representative Sam Massingale, Wickersham won the special election to fill the Seventh District's congressional seat in 1941. Reelected in 1942 and 1944, he lost the Democratic nomination in the first post-World War II election to Preston E. Peden, a young attorney from Altus and returning war veteran. Wickersham remained in Washington, where he operated a real estate business and readied for a rematch. It came in 1948, and he defeated Peden by three thousand votes before winning the general election handily. Re-elected in 1950, Wickersham became the last person to represent Oklahoma's Seventh District. The census of that year recorded a population decline of sufficient magnitude to cost the state two of its then eight congressional seats. In the redistricting that followed, Wickersham's district was folded into the new Sixth District. The vast district covered most of western Oklahoma and included portions of the old Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth districts. Wickersham, therefore, faced incumbent congressman Toby Morris, who had represented the old Sixth District. Wickersham won the 1952 contest for the new Sixth District seat and was reelected over much less serious opposition in 1954. There then followed a series of tough campaigns with Morris. In 1956, Morris unseated him by a 5000-vote margin and won again in 1958--this time by 81 votes. In 1960, Wickersham reclaimed the Democratic nomination from Morris with a 402-vote edge. He then faced Republican Clyde A. Wheeler, Jr., in the heretofore dependably Democratic district. After what many regarded as partisan chicanery on the part of Democratic election officials, the official count favored Wickersham by fewer than a hundred votes. In 1962, Wickersham survived a close primary and general election (both against considerably weaker opponents) to earn his ninth congressional term. It was to be his last. Jed Johnson, Jr., the son of a former representative of the old Sixth District, beat Wickersham in the 1964 Democratic primary and did so again in 1966, finally ending his Washington tenure. This was not, however, the end of Wickersham's political career. His fellow citizens in Mangum, Oklahoma, sent him to the state legislature for eight years beginning in 1971. On his eighty-second birthday--February 9, 1988--he again took a seat in the state house. He occupied it only briefly as he died five weeks later on March 15, 1988, in Oklahoma City.
Found in 1 Collection or Record:
Victor E. Wickersham Collection
Collection
Identifier: CAC-CC-056
Scope and Contents
The Wickersham Collection is comprised of 16.3 cubic feet of material. The materials date from 1938 through 1956 with the bulk covering the period 1950-1956. The collection contains numerous topics of interest for research, including water conservation, federal aid to Oklahoma education, and Indian affairs. There is also material on the growth of Clinton-Sherman and Altus Air Force Bases as well as work performed at the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge. A small number of photographs are...