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Homer Truett Bone is Born

Today in Masonic History Homer Truett Bone is born in 1883.

Bone was born in Franklin, Indiana on January 25, 1883. He attended the local public schools; later he worked for the postal service and also in the accounting and credit department of a furniture company. His family moved to Tacoma shortly after Washington was admitted to the Union in 1889. He attended Tacoma Law School from which he graduated in 1911. He was quickly admitted to the bar and went into private practice. He was deputy prosecuting attorney for Pierce County in 1912, later to become the corporation counsel for the Port of Tacoma from 1918 to 1932.

His early pollical career as a member of the Socialist Party of American was not a success. He was defeated as a candidate for Pierce County Prosecuting Attorney and then Mayor of Tacoma. He then ran for the House of Representatives as an unsuccessful Farmer-Labor Party candidate in 1920. Finally in the 1922 election he won election to the Washington State House of Representatives on the Farmer-Labor ticket. The “Bone Bill” which he authored gave municipal utilities like Seattle the right to sell service outside city limits. In 1928 he was again unsuccessful as Republican candidate for Congress.

In the 1932 Roosevelt landslide election, he won election as a Democrat to the Senate and served until his resignation November 13, 1944. While in the Senate he was chairman of the Committee on Patents [76th through 78th Congresses]. Like President Roosevelt, taking the advice of his administrative assistant Saul Hass who later became owner of Seattle's radio and television station KIRO, he quickly learned the use of radio as a new communicative media.

He was an active advocate for public ownership of power companies plus other progressive causes such as his advocacy and support of the building of both the Bonneville and Grand Coulee dams on the Columbia River. He was opposed to US involvement in World War II. Along with Representative Warren G. Magnuson who succeeded him in office, Bone wrote legislation that established the National Cancer Institute.

Even though he had been at odds with him from time to time, on April 1, 1944 President Roosevelt appointed him to a place on the of the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals bench in San Francisco. He was immediately confirmed the same day. However, he delayed submitting his official resignation from Congress until after the November election so that Governor Martin could appoint the newly elected Senate candidate, Warren G. Magnuson to gain some valuable extra seniority.

He held service on the Federal bench until 1956 taking Senior Judge Status January 1, 1956. After leaving the active bench, he practiced law in San Francisco until 1968 when he returned to Tacoma where he died March 11, 1970. His ashes are interred in Oakwood Cemetery in Tacoma, Washington.

He was raised in Evergreen Lodge #5, F. & A.M., Tacoma, March 17, 1926.

This article provided by Brother Coe Tug Morgan – Honorary Grand Secretary, Past Grand Historian Grand Lodge F. & A. M. of Washington.