Alvin Morell Bentley - Government Service

Government Service

He served as vice consul and secretary with the United States Foreign Service, serving in Mexico (1942–1944), Colombia (1945–1946), Hungary (1947–1949), and Italy (1949–1950). He returned to Washington, D.C., on March 15, 1950, for work in the State Department.

Disagreeing with the Truman administration's foreign policy, Bentley resigned from the diplomatic service in 1950 and returned to live in Owosso, Michigan. He was a delegate to Republican State conventions in 1950, 1951, and 1952. He was vice president of Lake Huron Broadcasting Company, Saginaw, Michigan, starting in 1952, and a director of Mitchell-Bentley Corporation.

In 1952, Bentley defeated the incumbent Republican U.S. Representative Fred L. Crawford in the primary election for Michigan's 8th congressional district and went on to win in the 1952 general election. Bentley was elected to the Eighty-third and to the three succeeding Congresses, serving from January 3, 1953 to January 3, 1961. He was not a candidate for re-nomination in 1960, instead running for a seat in the United States Senate and losing to Democratic incumbent Patrick V. McNamara in the 1960 general election.

Bentley was one of five Representatives shot on March 1, 1954, in the U.S. Capitol shooting incident when four Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire from the visitors' balcony into the chamber of the United States House of Representatives. Bentley was shot in the chest, but survived.