Last Lines

Representative Marion Anthony Zioncheck of Washington, whose besotted escapades ended in a Maryland asylum last June, last week made headlines in the U. S. for the last time.

First he firmly announced that he was not a candidate for reelection. Said he: "I want to be America's forgotten man." Reason: His mother was ill. Five other Democrats and seven Republicans had already come forth as aspirants for his House seat.

Three days later at Olympia, Zioncheck's bride, a onetime PWA stenographer named Rubye Louise Nix, sat down at a typewriter in the office of Washington's Secretary of State, filled out her husband's declaration of candidacy, which he signed. Reason: His mother wished him to. He announced he would run not as "a personality" but as a man "who stands for certain principles." Two days later 17 local railway union groups endorsed him on this platform and Representative Zioncheck rousingly declared: "I still feel that even if all those things they say about me are true, I'm the best man they've had in Congress from this State."

Next day his wife and his brother-in-law, William Nadeau, drove to Seattle's Arctic Building to pick Representative Zioncheck up and take him to address a meeting of postal workers. Mr. Nadeau went up to the Congressman's office on the fifth floor, found him writing. "Come on, Marion, let's go," said his brother-in-law. Mr. Zioncheck rose, dodged suddenly into the next room, plunged through an open window. He struck the sidewalk head first, 50 ft. from the car where his wife was sitting. She screamed, fainted. On the dead man's desk was found this final scribble: "My only hope in life was to improve the condition of an unfair economic system that held no promise to those that all the wealth of even a decent chance to survive let alone live."

A Washington acquaintance put forth as a possible explanation for Zioncheck's recent aberrations the fact that his best girl had married another man.

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