Image courtesy of Library of Congress

LA GUARDIA, Fiorello Henry, a Representative from New York; born in New York City December 11, 1882; moved to Arizona; attended the public schools and high school at Prescott, Ariz.; returned to New York; was graduated from the New York University Law School in 1910; was admitted to the bar the same year and commenced practice in New York City; served in the American Consular Service in Budapest, Hungary, and in Trieste, Austria, 1901-1904; American consular agent at Fiume, Hungary, 1904-1906; interpreter in the Immigration Service at Ellis Island 1907-1910; deputy attorney general of the State of New York 1915-1917; elected as a Republican to the Sixty-fifth and Sixty-sixth Congresses and served from March 4, 1917, until December 31, 1919, when he resigned; during the First World War absented himself from the House and on August 15, 1917, was commissioned a first lieutenant in the Army Air Service; promoted to the rank of captain and later to that of major; commanded the United States air forces on the Italian-Austrian front and was awarded the Italian War Cross; president of the board of aldermen of New York City in 1920 and 1921; elected as a Republican to the Sixty-eighth Congress, as an American Labor candidate to the Sixty-ninth Congress, and as a Republican to the Seventieth, Seventy-first, and Seventy-second Congresses (March 4, 1923-March 3, 1933); unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1932 to the Seventy-third Congress; served as mayor of New York City 1934-1945; president of the United States Conference of Mayors 1936-1945; United States Director of Office of Civilian Defense from May 1941 to February 1942; chairman of the United States section of the Permanent Joint Board on Defense (United States and Canada) 1940-1946; special United States Ambassador to Brazil in 1946; director general of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration in 1946; died in New York City September 20, 1947; interment in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.