Howard Cannon

Howard's parents Walter Cannon and Leah Sullivan married in 1909.

When Cannon was two years old his father left for England to serve a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for two years.

Cannon went to Woodward School in St. George, close enough to his home he could walk home for lunch.

He then went to Dixie High School.

During summers, he worked as a bell hop at the North Rim Lodge along the Grand Canyon.

In the evenings he would form a small band where he used his skills as a saxophonist to entertain guests.

He delivered copies of the Deseret News around St. George on horseback.

Howard Walter Cannon (January 26, 1912 – March 5, 2002) was an American politician from Nevada.

He graduated from Dixie Junior College (now Utah Tech University) and received a bachelor's degree in music education from Arizona State Teachers College (now Northern Arizona University) in 1933.

In the summer of 1936 after his graduation he directed an orchestra of four, performing on the SS Jefferson on a cruise from Seattle, Washington, to Yokohama, Japan.

Also during his law school years Cannon competed in rodeos and learned to be an airplane pilot.

Also in the summer of 1936, Cannon began dating Dorothy Pace of Alamo, Nevada.

He then received an LL.B. from the University of Arizona Law School in 1937.

While studying at the University of Arizona he was the director of the university pep orchestra.

Between the summer of his second and third year he directed this group at a hotel in Seattle, Washington.

Cannon became a lawyer after passing the bar exams in Arizona (1937), Utah (1938) and Nevada (1946).

He served as a reference and research attorney for the Utah State Senate in 1939, and won election as county attorney of Washington County, Utah in 1940.

During World War II, Cannon served as a troop carrier pilot in the United States Army Air Corps and its subsequent incarnation as the United States Army Air Forces.

In 1940, Cannon won his first election as county attorney for Washington County, Utah.

The following year with the start of World War II, Cannon served in the United States Army for a year and then in the United States Army Air Corps from 1942 to 1946, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel.

Cannon later served in the Army Air Forces Air Reserve as a major general.

Assigned to the European theater, he dropped paratroopers at Saint-Come-du-Mont, Normandy and during the following combat mission in September 1944 was shot down over the Netherlands.

He spent 42 days trying to return to the Allied lines with the assistance of the Dutch underground.

They married on December 21, 1945.

After he finished law school he returned to St. George.

Among his actions on his return was buying a house adjacent to Dixie College as an investment property.

Released from active duty in 1946, he joined the Army Air Forces Reserve until 1947 when he transitioned to the Air Force Reserve concurrent with the establishment of the U.S. Air Force as a separate service.

In 1949, Cannon returned to politics, winning election as city attorney for Las Vegas, Nevada.

Elected to the first of four consecutive terms in 1958, he served in the United States Senate from 1959 to 1983.

He was a member of the Democratic Party.

Born in St. George, Utah, Cannon graduated from Northern Arizona University and the University of Arizona Law School.

After four consecutive terms in that office, Cannon defeated Republican incumbent U.S. Senator George W. Malone in the 1958 election.

As senator, Cannon chaired multiple committees, including the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation and the Committee on Rules and Administration.

Cannon also sponsored the Airline Deregulation Act, a bill signed into law by President Jimmy Carter in 1978 that lowered airfares through deregulation of the airline industry.

Cannon's final Senate term was mired in a scandal after the revelation of a 1979 meeting with Teamsters union president Roy Lee Williams where Cannon was offered a bribe to block the Motor Carrier Act of 1980.

The scandal contributed to Cannon losing re-election in 1982 to Republican challenger Chic Hecht.

After leaving the Senate, Cannon remained in Washington as an aviation and defense consultant for nearly a decade before retiring to Las Vegas in the mid-1990s.

Cannon was born in St. George, Utah.

His grandfather, David Cannon, was the younger brother of George Q. Cannon and a leading figure in the building of the St. George Temple, who was later the third president of that temple.

His father Walter Cannon was one of David Cannon's 31 children.