Congressman Marion Zioncheck commits suicide on August 8, 1936.

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On August 8, 1936, U.S. Representative Marion Zioncheck (age 35) leaps to his death from his 5th-floor office in the Arctic Club building in downtown Seattle. The suicide of the two-term Congressman opens his 1st District seat to a bid by King County Prosecutor Warren G. Magnuson (1905-1989), who is elected the following November.

Marion Zioncheck was born in 1901 in Poland, and arrived in Seattle with his parents four years later. He attended the University of Washington and earned a law degree while also making a name for himself as a left-wing leader in the Democratic Party and Washington Commonwealth Federation (WCF), which supported his election to Congress in 1932.

As a Member of Congress, Zioncheck made headlines mostly for extracurricular antics and drunken escapades with his new wife Rubeye Louise Nix, including one late-night frolic in a Washington, D.C. fountain. Beset by the press and by critics of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal policies, which he ardently championed, Zioncheck became depressed and hinted that he might not seek reelection in 1936.

His friend and ally, King County Prosecutor Warren G. Magnuson, took him at his word and filed to run for Zioncheck's seat on August 1. This may have been the last straw for the embattled Congressman.

On August 8, 1936, Zioncheck completed his will and a farewell note declaring "My only hope in life was to improve the conditions of an unfair economic system." He then leapt from the window of his office on the 5th floor of the Arctic Club Building at 3rd Avenue and Cherry Street in downtown Seattle. His body struck the pavement directly in front of a car occupied by his wife.

Sources:
Shelby Scates, Warren G. Magnuson and the Shaping of Twentieth Century America (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997).

By Walt Crowley , August 21, 2003

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Marion Zioncheck (1901-1936) and his wife Rubeye Louise Nix, August 1936
Courtesy Walla Walla Bulletin, WSU Libraries

Rep. Marion Zioncheck, Sen Lewis Schwellenbach, King County Prosecutor Warren G. Magnuson, 1934
Courtesy UW Special Collections

Marion Zioncheck tombstone, Evergreen-Washelli Cemetery, Seattle, August 2005
Photo by Priscilla Long