Ikard began his practice of law in Wichita Falls in the firm now known as Gibson Davenport Anderson; one of the founding partners of the firm was Orville Bullington, the 1932 Republicangubernatorial nominee.[2]
Ikard enlisted in the United States Army in January 1944 and served with Company K, One Hundred and Tenth Infantry, Twenty-eighth Division. He was prisoner of war in Germany in 1944 and 1945. He was awarded the Purple Heart Medal.[1]
Political history
After the war, Ikard served as judge of Thirtieth Judicial District Court of Wichita Falls. He was appointed chairman of the Veterans Affairs Commission of Texas in 1948. Then Governor Beauford Jester in November 1948 named Ikard as judge of the Thirtieth Judicial District Court. He subsequently was elected in 1950, and served until September 8, 1951. He was a delegate to the Democratic National Conventions in 1956, 1960, and 1968. He was chairman of the Texas State Democratic Convention in 1960.[1]
Ikard was elected to the Eighty-second Congress to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of his fellow Democrat, Ed Gossett. He was reelected to the Eighty-third and to the four succeeding Congresses and served from September 8, 1951, to December 15, 1961, when he resigned to become an oil industry lobbyist.[1]
This report unquestionably will fan emotions, raise fears, and bring demands for action. The substance of the report is that there is still time to save the world's peoples from the catastrophic consequence of pollution, but time is running out.
One of the most important predictions of the report is that carbon dioxide is being added to the atmosphere by the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas at such a rate that by the year 2000 the heat balance will be so modified as possibly to cause marked changes in climate beyond local or even national efforts. The report further states, and I quote:
“… the pollution from internal combustion engines is so serious, and is growing so fast that an alternative nonpolluting means of powering automobiles, buses, and trucks is likely to become a national necessity.” Ikard, F. N. Meeting the challenges of 1966. In Annual Meeting of the American Petroleum Institute 1965 12–15 (API, 1965).[5]
Ikard met his second wife at an environmental conference in Sweden. He was irritated when he first saw Jayne carrying an image of a silver whale while she marched in a parade in Stockholm. The two were introduced the next night at a dinner and were married after a quick courtship six weeks later in Austin, Texas. On their wedding day, the Ikards visited former President Lyndon B. Johnson, then in the last year of his life, and Lady Bird Johnson at their LBJ Ranch in Gillespie County in the Texas Hill Country. Johnson invited the couple to spend their honeymoon at his Haywood House twenty miles away. He presented the Ikards with their first wedding gifts, two silver mint julep glasses stamped with "LBJ" on the bottom.[8]
Ikard died in 1991 in Washington, D.C., of cardiac arrest.[9]
Ikard is interred at Arlington National Cemetery.[10] Jayne Ikard was Roman Catholic. She died in Washington, D.C., of emphysema at the age of eighty-three on August 27, 2010, and is interred alongside her husband at Arlington National Cemetery.[8]
Quotes
Former Congressman Frank Ikard once wisecracked that Alan Greenspan is "the kind of person who knows how many thousands of flat-headed bolts were used in a Chevrolet and what it would do to the national economy if you took out three of them".
