Henry J. Berquist

Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, he was educated there.[2] He moved to Wisconsin and became actively involved in the fur farming industry; he was a national organizer and vice president of the American fur Growers Association and worked as a cartoonist for their monthly magazine. In 1934, he attended the Farm and Labor College at Tomahawk and he was employed as superintendent and labor foreman for the Northlands Packing Company in Rhinelander.[2]

Also in 1934, Berquist made his first attempt at elected office when he ran for Wisconsin State Assembly, challenging incumbent Democrat Neil McEachin in the Florence–Forest–Oneida assembly district. McEachin also faced a primary challenge that year after coming into significant conflict with his own party due to a dispute with Governor Albert G. Schmedeman—also a Democrat—over conflicting plans for state controls of alcohol law following the Repeal of Prohibition in the United States.[3] Berquist ran as a Socialist and came in a distant fourth in the general election.[4]

The seat went to Wisconsin Progressive candidate Herman L. Kronschnabl, but only two years later Kronschnabl announced that he would forgo re-election in favor of running for a seat in the Wisconsin State Senate.[5] Berquist decided to run again, this time seeking the Progressive Party nomination. Four candidates ultimately ran in the Progressive primary election. Berquist won a narrow victory for the nomination with 33% of the primary vote—taking roughly the same number of votes he had received in the 1934 general election.[6] Berquist was subsequently re-elected in 1938 and 1940.

In the Assembly, Berquist rose to junior floor leader for the Progressive caucus and was appointed secretary of the special joint investigative committee on land utilization in the northern area of the state.[7]

In 1942, Berquist declared his candidacy for Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin on the Wisconsin Progressive ticket, while strongly endorsing the economic policies and war policies of the Roosevelt administration.[8] In the Progressive Party primary, he faced state senator Philip E. Nelson, a former Republican who represented the northwest corner of the state. In the September Primary, Nelson won with a commanding 71% of the vote. Nelson, however, had already been appointed to the federal War Production Board and, on the eve of the Progressive Party state convention, declined the nomination.[9] On October 5, the Progressives formally nominated Henry Berquist in place of Nelson.[10]

In the general election, Berquist was defeated by incumbent Lieutenant Governor Walter Samuel Goodland. This would prove to be a fateful election, as the winner of the gubernatorial election, Progressive Orland Steen Loomis, died of a heart attack a month before taking office, leaving the Republican Goodland to be sworn in as Governor.[11]

Prior to the Attack on Pearl Harbor, the Progressive Party had a staunch non-interventionist policy and insisted that America's best strategy in this era was to build up domestic strength. Berquist, during his time in the Assembly, was considered a staunch pacifist and isolationist—at one point he supported a bill to ban toy soldiers and toy guns, saying that perhaps removing some of the glamor from war for children would reduce the likelihood of future wars.[12] However, just weeks after his defeat in the 1942 election, Berquist resigned his Assembly seat and enlisted in the United States Army for service in World War II.[13] Despite being nearly 38 years old, Berquist entered service as a private and was stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, with the 52nd Armored Infantry Regiment, 9th Armored Division. While at Fort Riley, he wrote to his teenage son explaining the reasons for his absence and his rationale for the war in a widely reprinted letter.[14] He rose to the rank of corporal by spring of 1943, and trained with his regiment throughout the year in California, Missouri, and Louisiana. He was promoted to sergeant in the summer of 1944.[15]

Following the Normandy landings, he and his division were deployed to England in August and landed in Normandy in September. They were first assigned to the front in late October, during the Allied advance from Paris to the Rhine. Berquist was stationed in Luxembourg when the German counter-offensive struck in the December 1944 Battle of the Bulge and was taken prisoner during the fighting. He was first reported missing December 18, 1944, but was not known to be in captivity until April 1945, when he was allowed to write to his wife to inform her of his situation.[16] Berquist was held at a German prisoner-of-war camp until May 1945, when the camp was liberated by General George S. Patton's Third Army.[17][18] He was awarded the Purple Heart, the Good Conduct Medal, the European Theatre Campaign Medal with two battle stars, Combat Infantryman Badge, and a Presidential Unit Citation.

Berquist returned to Wisconsin in June 1945 and addressed sessions of the Wisconsin Senate and Assembly on his war experience. He spoke about the atrocities of the Germans, encouraged them to support veterans of the war, and gave an exhortation that there must be "no breakdown of democracy in the United States."[19]

In 1946, the Wisconsin Progressive Party, which had been Berquist's political home since 1936, voted to dissolve and return to the Wisconsin Republican Party with the goal of shifting that party toward a more progressive policy agenda. The move was led by longtime Progressive United States Senator Robert M. La Follette Jr., who saw unification with the Republican Party as his only path to re-election.[20] Berquist, at the convention, instead spoke in favor of the Progressives joining with the Democratic Party; a week later, he announced he would seek the Democratic nomination for the United States House of Representatives in Wisconsin's 10th congressional district. Berquist announced his candidacy in an open letter to Senator La Follette in which he explained that Roosevelt, Truman, and Wallace were far more aligned with the Progressive Party's ideals than the Republicans. He accused La Follette of aligning himself with the party of reactionaries and subordinating the ideals of the party to his own ambitions.[21] La Follette went on to lose the Republican nomination to Joseph McCarthy, and Berquist was defeated in the general election by incumbent Alvin O'Konski.

Following his defeat, Berquist became involved in the newly reorganized national Progressive Party, which had been formed around former Roosevelt Vice President Henry A. Wallace. Berquist became the Wisconsin campaign director for Wallace's 1948 presidential campaign. At the Wisconsin convention which established the new party in the state, Berquist was named chairman, although a significant schism quickly emerged with delegates walking out and accusing the party of being driven by communists.[22] In July of 1948, Berquist announced his candidacy for Governor on the new party's ticket. In his announcement, he asserted that Wallace and the new Progressive Party were the true heirs to Roosevelt and the New Deal which he said was being derailed and reversed by the efforts of Southern Democrats and "northern big city political machines." He pointed to the emerging crisis of the new Cold War and the nuclear arms race, the resultant massive expansion of defense spending, the resumption of the military draft, new curbs on labor rights, price inflation, abrogation of civil rights for African Americans and political minorities, and a housing crisis. "Control of the Republican and Democratic parties alike," he alleged, "has passed into the hands of the economic royalists."[23] Berquist came in a distant 3rd in the gubernatorial election, earning just 1% of the vote.[24] Wallace also did not win a single electoral vote.

Following the 1948 election, the Wisconsin branch of the Progressive Party quickly dissolved. Berquist ran for office three more times as a Democrat, running for the Assembly in 1956 and 1958, and for Wisconsin State Senate in 1960. But did not hold a state legislative office again.[25]

In the late 1960s, he served on the Oneida County Board of Supervisors and as chairman of the town of Pelican, Wisconsin, and was, for several years, chairman of the Oneida County Democratic Party. In 1975, he was appointed to the State Board on Aging by Governor Patrick Lucey, serving until 1979.[26]

In 1982, Berquist moved to New Mexico, fully retired, where he died in 1990. He was interred at New Mexico's Fort Bayard National Cemetery in a ceremony with full military honors.[27][28]

Berquist was married twice. With his first wife, Frances, he had a son, James, and a daughter, Frances, though their daughter died in infancy in 1928. While Berquist was at war in 1944, Frances ran unsuccessfully for Wisconsin State Assembly in his former assembly district on the Progressive ticket. Frances died in 1978.

He later married Leona Schoeneck and became stepfather to her daughter, Eloise Volkert.

After serving in the war, Berquist was a member of the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and Military Order of the Purple Heart.

• Berquist, Henry J. at OurCampaigns.com
• Henry J. Berquist at Find a Grave