Distinguished Alumni Recognition for 2007
Clifford Hope Sr. '17
- John Dawson '06
- Clifford Hope Sr. '17
- Marie Russell '25
- Delmas Hill '29
- Richard Donnelly '38
- Jack Campbell '40
- Jerry Michaud '51
- Senator Robert J. Dole '52
- Sherman Parks '55
- Delano Lewis '63
- Kay McFarland '64
- William H. Kurtis '66
Clifford Hope Sr., graduated from Washburn Law in 1917, and served as class president. He was admitted to the bar that same year.
Hope served during WWI as a second lieutenant with the thirty-fifth and eighty-fifth divisions in the United States and France from 1917 to 1919. After the service, Hope entered private practice in Garden City, Kan. From 1921 to 1927, Hope was a member of the Kansas House of Representatives; he served as speaker pro tempore in 1923, and then speaker in 1925, at the age of 31. Hope was elected to the 70th Congress as a Republican, and served from 1927 to 1957. He was elected to the Committee on Agriculture during his first term and was chairman of that committee in the 80th Congress. Beginning in 1932 he was the ranking Republican member of that committee.
During his congressional tenure Hope also served on the committee on post war economic policy and planning of the 78th Congress; the republican steering and congressional committee; and was chairman of the republican conference. Hope was the U.S. delegate to the Conference of the Interparliamentary Union at Stockholm, Sweden in 1949. He was congressional advisor to the U.S. delegation to the Inter-American Conservation Conference in Denver, Colo., in 1948. In 1945, Hope was appointed as one of the legislative advisors to the first Food and Agriculture Conference of the United Nations held in Quebec and was subsequently appointed in that capacity to each of its annual meetings.
After Bob Dole, Hope has the longest tenure of any other Washburn Law graduate in Congress.
Hope served for 30 years in Congress, including four years as chair of the house agriculture committee. He served in the Kansas Legislature from 1919 to 1925 and as the Kansas Representative to Congress from 1927 to 1957. He practiced law for many years in Garden City, and was senior member of the firm then known as Hope, Haag, Saffels & Hope.
In 1951 Hope received the Distinguished Service Award from the Washburn Alumni Association.
Hope's son, Clifford R. Hope, Jr., graduated from Washburn Law in 1950. Clifford Hope Sr. died May 16, 1970, at the age of 76.
