Caessler Golder (1901-1967)

Portrait from the Muscatine Journal and News Tribune, June 22, 1967.

  For many years a prominent name in the civic life of Scott County, Iowa, Caessler Golder had fleeting involvement in Iowa politics in the late 1930s, being a Republican candidate for the Iowa House of Representatives from Scott County in the 1936 primary election. The son of Jacob and Rose (Levitch) Golder, Caessler Golder was born on October 13, 1901, in Sioux City, Iowa. Little is known of his early life, except notice of his earning his law degree and opening a law practice in Davenport, where he practiced for a number of years. He married in August 1927 to Suzanne Ruth Siegel, with whom he had two children. The couple would later divorce and in 1953 he remarried to Ruth Glass Polsky (1906-1994), who survived him upon his death in 1967. 

  In addition to his law practice in Davenport, Caessler Golder gained further notoriety in Iowa's Jewish community. A founding member of the Temple Emanuel Brotherhood of Davenport, Golder served that organization as its first president, and also made strides in city Masonic circles, holding memberships in the Davenport Consistory, the Kaaba Temple, and was a past master of the Trinity Lodge #208 of Davenport. 

  Golder entered the political life of his state in 1936 when he became one of three candidates vying for the Republican nomination for representative from Scott County. When the votes were tallied on June 1 of that year, it was Golder who polled dead last, garnering 1,522 to Peter Bendixen's winning total of 2, 670. Bendixen, in turn, would go on to lose the general election in November, voters instead electing two Democrats (Walter Dietz and Frank Engel) to the statehouse.

  While his pursuance of public office came to naught, Caessler Golder continued with his law practice after his loss and was later named as an attorney for the Iowa State Tax Commission, serving for two decades. Golder died in Muscatine, Iowa on June 21, 1967, having been stricken by a fatal heart attack while downtown. Following funeral services, Golder was interred at the Jewish Cemetery in Muscatine. He was survived by his second wife Ruth, who, following her death in 1994, was interred at the same cemetery as her husband.