Library of Congress

DOWNEY, Sheridan, (son of Stephen Wheeler Downey), a Senator from California; born in Laramie, Albany County, Wyo., March 11, 1884; attended the public schools; graduated from the law department of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 1907; admitted to the bar the same year and commenced practice in Laramie, Wyo.; moved to Sacramento, Calif., in 1913 and continued the practice of law; elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate in 1938; reelected in 1944 and served from January 3, 1939, until his resignation on November 30, 1950, due to ill health; was not a candidate for renomination in 1950; chairman, Committee on Civil Service (Seventy-eighth and Seventy-ninth Congresses); died in San Francisco, Calif., October 25, 1961; body willed to the University of California Medical Center.