1. Leo Thomas Crowley was a senior administrator for President Franklin D Roosevelt as the head of the Foreign Economic Administration.
18 Facts About Leo Crowley
1. 2.
Historians later discovered that late in the 1930s, senior Washington officials learned that Leo Crowley had embezzled from his banks in Wisconsin in the 1920s and 1930s.
3.
Leo Crowley was born to Thomas and Katie Crowley in Milton, Wisconsin, immigrants of Irish Catholic origin.
4.
Young Leo Crowley delivered groceries and saved his tips from customers.
5.
Leo Crowley worked hard to grow the company, and his share in it, until he owned it outright in 1919.
6.
Leo Crowley served as a delegate for Al Smith at the Democratic National Convention.
7.
Leo Crowley thus came in contact with Jouett Shouse and John J Raskob, operatives for Al Smith.
8.
Leo Crowley was effective in bringing about a progressive-democratic alliance for the election of Franklin Roosevelt.
9.
Leo Crowley negotiated with Congressional leaders on banking issues and played a central role in designing new federal banking laws.
10.
Leo Crowley promoted Roosevelt's political interests in Wisconsin by working with the state's left-wing Progressive Party for the 1936 and 1940 elections.
11.
Biographer Weiss tells of the incredible tale of how the nearly-bankrupt Leo Crowley became the leader in banking security and thus ended the epidemic of bank runs that had closed thousands of small banks.
12.
Leo Crowley was now a cabinet member in the Roosevelt administration.
13.
The skeleton in Leo Crowley's closet was his misappropriation of funds in 1931.
14.
O'Connor found multiple cases of illegal financial enrichment by Leo Crowley totalling tens of thousands of dollars.
15.
Leo Crowley made adroit moves that gave him a political base and preserved him in office.
16.
Back in the business world, Leo Crowley was named chairman of the Milwaukee Road in December 1945 and made it turn a profit until the mid-1960s.
17.
Leo Crowley continued contact with the White House: President Dwight Eisenhower appointed Crowley to the United States Commission on Civil Rights in his second term, and he was known to have dined with Lyndon Johnson.
18.
Leo Crowley died on April 15,1972, in a hospital in Madison, Wisconsin.