Warren Grant “Maggie” Magnuson had humble beginnings in Moorhead, Minnesota. The date of his birth is sealed in the Clay County Courthouse, but most give it as April 12, 1905. Abandoned shortly thereafter, he was soon adopted by William and Emma Magnuson, who owned a bar in Moorhead. They would later adopt a daughter, Clara. William left the family in 1921 and Emma turned to bootlegging in order to support her children, although her official occupation was listed as owning a boarding house. He remained close to his mother her entire life, but largely ignored his father, despite the latter’s attempts to contact him for financial support. Magnuson attended Moorhead High School, playing quarterback on the football team and serving as captain of the baseball team. It is here that he received the nickname, Maggie, one he did not particularily care for, but he understood it came from a place of fondness and therefore tolerated it. His desire to serve the public was evident in high school, as he ran a YMCA camp and delivered newspapers across the river in Fargo, North Dakota. He graduated from high school in 1923 and attended the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, North Dakota before moving on to North Dakota Agricultural College in 1924. He was there for a year before he made his way to Seattle, Washington, following his heart and a former girlfriend.
Once in Washington, he enrolled in the University of Washington, in 1925 and soon had a reputation as a fun-loving frat boy. He studied law, possibly because of the influence of Republican Bill Stern, who was a kind of “big brother” to Magnuson. He graduated with a law degree in 1929 and became active in politics, although he identified as a Democrat unlike his mentor. That did not stop the relationship between the two and they remained close. His political career took off in 1933 when he was elected to the Washington House of Representatives. Unsurprisingly considering his roots, Magnuson was a “wet” and supported repeals to prohibition. Also during his time as a representative he sponsored the first unemployment compensation bill in the United
Senator Warren Magnuson. Public Domain.
States. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1936 and introduced the National Cancer Institute Act (1937). He was reelected continuously through 1942, when he briefly left politics to serve in the Navy during WWII. In 1944 he ran for senate and was elected. He served in that position until 1980, when he was defeated in that years election. Notable in his congressional career are his efforts to fund health care and research, consumer protection, authoring and sponsoring the Chinese Exclusion Repeal Act of 1943, also known as the Magnuson Act, keeping supertankers out of Puget Sound, and helping to settle a dispute between Boeing and the Native American tribes in the area.
Warren Magnuson married a former Miss Seattle in 1928, but the marriage ended in divorce in 1935. He eventually moved his mother to live near him in 1941 on Bainbridge Island near Seattle. Many of the women he later dated recalled being fearful of his mother, who stood at 6 feet in height and was quite intimidating. He dated numerous and glamorous women for many years before marrying the widow Jermaine Elliott Peralta in 1964. They remained together until his death on May 20th, 1989. He helped to raise Peralta’s daughter, Juanita, as his own.
Sources:
(I) 1920 United States Federal Census. Emma Magnuson. Moorhead, Clay County, Minnesota. p. 27, lines 85-8. January 27, 1920. Retrieved from: http://search.ancestrylibrary.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?_phsrc=FYj27&_phstart=successSource&usePUBJs=true&gss=angs-g&new=1&rank=1&msT=1&gsfn=Warren%20Grant&gsfn_x=0&gsln=Magnuson&gsln_x=0&msypn__ftp=Moorhead,%20Clay,%20Minnesota,%20USA&msypn=45836&msypn_PInfo=8-%7C0%7C1652393%7C0%7C2%7C0%7C26%7C0%7C648%7C45836%7C0%7C0%7C&MSAV=0&msbdy=1905&catbucket=rstp&uidh=y43&pcat=ROOT_CATEGORY&h=77849054&db=1920usfedcen&indiv=1&ml_rpos=2
(II) Oldham, Kit. “Magnuson, Warren G. (1905-1989).” 2003. Accessed October 22, 2016. http://www.historylink.org/File/5569.
(III) Scates, Shelby. Warren G. Magnuson and the Shaping of Twentieth-Century America. 2nd ed. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997.
Video Credit:
(VI) The Book Archive. “Warren Magnuson Interview.” YouTube. December 8, 2011. Posted October 22, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gq42pm2aZq8. Original source: http://thefilmarchive.org/.
Image Credit:
(V) U.S. Senator Warren G. Magnuson. ca. 1950. http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=M000053.
