John Hammerschmidt

Hammerschmidt was inducted into the Arkansas Aviation Hall of Fame in 1990 by the Arkansas Aviation Historical Society.

Hammerschmidt was a member of the President's Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism (PCAST) which was organized in September 1989 to review and report on aviation security policy in the light of the sabotage of Pan Am Flight 103 on December 21, 1988.

In 1974, a nationally Democratic year, he secured his fifth term by defeating the then 28-year-old Bill Clinton. He was also the first Republican elected to the House of Representatives from Arkansas since Reconstruction. Coincidentally, Hammerschmidt left the House the same month in which Clinton became president.

In the 1966 election, Hammerschmidt won the Republican nomination for his 3rd district and then defeated the incumbent Democrat, James William Trimble, by more than nine thousand votes. He became the first Republican to represent Arkansas in Congress since Reconstruction. Hammerschmidt was elected twelve more times, having served twenty-six years from January 3, 1967 to January 3, 1993, from the 90th Congress to the 102nd Congress. He became very popular in his district, even though most of its residents had never been represented by a Republican before. The 3rd has always been a rather conservative district; it has only supported a Democrat for president twice since 1952.

Hammerschmidt was a delegate to the Republican National Conventions in 1964, 1968, 1972, 1976, 1980, 1984, and 1988. He was twice the state chairman of the Republican Party of Arkansas, serving from 1964 to 1966 and again from 2002 to 2004. His successor as chairman in 1966, Odell Pollard of Searcy in White County, died three weeks before the death of Hammerschmidt.

Hammerschmidt returned to the United States and attended Oklahoma A&M College (now Oklahoma State University) at Stillwater, Oklahoma, from 1945 to 1946, having received a Bachelor of Science degree. He then entered the lumber industry, working at the Hammerschmidt Lumber Company, which had been founded by his grandfather, and becoming its president. Hammerschmidt also was president of the Construction Products Company and the Arkansas Lumber Dealers Association and Southwestern Lumberman's Association.

Hammerschmidt served in the United States Army Air Corps during World War II. In 1942, he joined the 3rd Combat Cargo Group of the U.S. Army Air Corps and served in the China-Burma-India theater until the end of the war in 1945. Hammerschmidt received the Distinguished Flying Cross with three oak leaf clusters for his service in the war.

Born in Harrison in Boone County in northwestern Arkansas, Hammerschmidt was the fourth of five children of the former Junie Mildred Taylor and Arthur Paul Hammerschmidt. Both sets of grandparents migrated to Boone County in the early years of the 20th century and were of German descent. He graduated in 1938 from Harrison High School.

John Hammerschmidt was born on April 4, 1922 in Harrison, Boone County, Arkansas, USA.