MITCHELL COUNTY IAGENWEB: BIOS

 

Roy F. Hendrickson

 

Roy Hendrickson was born in 1903 and grew up in St. Ansgar, Mitchell county, Iowa. He became a newspaper writer, then a correspondent for the Associated Press. Later he became a director in the Roosevelt administration.

He died while on a hunting trip to Idaho, in 1968. He was buried in the First Lutheran Cemetery at St. Ansgar.

He was a brother of Morris and Otto Hendrickson.

Photo on right is from a Dec. 8, 1962 Mason City Globe Gazette.

Below are obituaries, newspaper articles written by Hendrickson, as well as articles about him.

 

 

TIME MAGAZINE ARTICLE ABOUT
ROY HENDRICKSON

 

FARMERS: Not Bundles But Food


Monday, Oct. 06, 1941 - TIME magazine

Last week Secretary Claude Wickard gave farmers and their Congressmen a straw to chew. Said he: Britain needs $1,000,000,000 worth of U.S. foodstuffs before February, or- she may lose the war.

Secretary Wickard was urging passage of the new $5,985,000,000 Lend-Lease appropriation in a hurry. So far the total Lend-Lease expenditures for farm products actually turned over to Britain comes to some $200,000,000. Britons, said Wickard, now get only about three eggs per person a month, four ounces of cured pork a week, eight ounces of butter or butter substitutes, half as much animal-protein food as they need. Even with the extra milk, cheese, canned tomatoes, dried beans, fruit, corn and pork that the $1,000,000,000 will supply, Britain will still fight on short rations.

By this calculation, the U.S. will provide 25% of Britain's food supply. The billion will also be spent in a fashion that will reach more people more directly than at any time since the defense program got under way. Orders . for arms filter slowly into the spending stream, but purchases for farm products, partly because the Department of Agriculture's Surplus Marketing Administration has long been set up and functioning, can pour out like a flash flood. Half a billion will go for meat, fish, fats, lard - mostly pork. Some $250,000,000 will go for dairy products, another $250,000,000 for poultry and eggs.

Secretary Wickard last week picked big, blond, Iowa-born Roy F. Hendrickson to head the Surplus Marketing Administration, charged with the actual purchasing of food for Britain. A onetime newspaperman who quit writing farm news in order to go to work for the Government's subsistence homesteads program, the new administrator is typical of many a departmental expert who has grown up under the New Deal. He was only 29, with eight newspaper years behind him (he left the Sioux City, Iowa Tribune when he won a Buick in a lottery), when he joined the Government, soon became Director of Personnel in the Department of Agriculture, moved thence to his new post. U.S. farm income came to $10,000,000,000 this year, but when the Lend-Lease appropriation passes, Roy Hendrickson will administer a program that will put U.S. farm income at an all-time high.

 

Social Security Death Index:

"ROY HENDRICKSON" was born 29 Dec 1903
he died Nov 1968, residing at ZIP code 22202 (Arlington, Arlington, VA)
SSN: 579-40-5733 was issued in the District of Columbia.

 

OBITUARY:

Roy F. Hendrickson Memorial Rites Held November 6, 1968

Memorial services for Roy F. Hendrickson, 64, a native of St. Ansgar, who died November 2, 1968 while duck hunting in Burley, Idaho, were held November 5 at Schroeder and Houg Funeral Home here with the Reverend Don Comnick, pastor of First Lutheran Church officiating.

Mr. Hendrickson was executive secretary of the National Federation of Grain Cooperatives at the time of his death. He was born on a farm near St. Ansgar, and was educated at St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota.

Long identified with the United States agricultural policy and programs in many capacities, he had recently been a member of the President-s National Advisory Commission of Food and Fiber, and was a co-leader of a special trade mission to East Central Europe last June, visiting Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia.

In 1925 he became a newspaperman, specializing in reporting governmental and agricultural activites in Minnesota, Iowa & New England. Two years later he was named Minnesota state capitol correspondent for the Associated Press in St. Paul. Later he was AP bureau chief at Minneapolis until transferring to Washington, D.C. to cover New Deal farm programs in 1932.

The following year he joined the Agricultural Department where he was successively assistant in the office of the secretary director of information in the Bureau of Agricultural Economics and director of the department-s personnel.

In 1941 he was appointed administrator in the Surplus Marketing Administration and director of marketing. Later, when other duties were added, he became director of the Food Distribution Administration and then was named deputy war food administrator & president of the Federal Surplus Commodities Corporation.

Mr. Hendrickson helped to develop wartime food programs & procurement of food supplied to U.S. Allies under Lend-Lease financing.

In 1944 he was appointed duty general for supplies of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, the first agency of the United Nations.

Since 1946 he had been executive secretary of the National Federation of Grain Cooperatives which had headquarters in . . . .

 

OBITUARY:

ROY HENDRICKSON

Memorial services for Roy Hendrickson, 64, former St. Ansgar resident who died Saturday at Boise, Idaho, will be at 2 p.m. Wednesday at the Schroeder and Houg Funeral Home.

Burial will be in First Lutheran Cemetery, St. Ansgar, Iowa.

Survived by his widow Jean; two sons: Bartlett, Bruce both of Rockville, Md.; three daughters: Mrs. Thomas Cedarlund of Boston, Ma., Mrs. William Kobin of New York, N.Y., Mrs. Wallace Clark of Lawrence, Kansas; two brothers: Morris and Otto, both of St. Ansgar; a sister, Mrs. Mark Abbott of International Falls, Minnesota.

Waterloo Daily Courier, Tuesday, November 5, 1968

 

Albert Lea, Minnesota
Evening Tribune,
Jan. 2, 1931, pg 1

An article written by Hendrickson

Miami Oklahoma
Daily News-Record,
Sep. 4, 1933, page 3

An article written by Hendrickson

Ironwood Michigan
Daily Globe,
Dec. 18, 1942

The next three articles are all basically the same, but show how news of Hendrickson was published all over the U.S.

Ogden, Utah,
Standard-Examiner
Dec. 15, 1942

Wisconsin Rapids
Daily Tribune,
Dec. 16, 1942

 

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