Something to Think About

The young minister faced his congregation in the Central Christian Church in Boone, Iowa, and said earnestly: "The conscientious Christian should be profoundly concerned with the affairs of human endeavor and with man's efforts to organize a just and honorable society through political action." That, back in 1956, was the Rev. Merwin Coad's way of announcing his candidacy for the U.S. House of Representatives. He won, and off he went to Washington--where, last week, Democrat Coad, 36, was up to his eyeglasses in trouble.

Coad's troubles had been building up for quite a while. They came into public view only after Clark Mollenhoff, the deep-digging Washington correspondent for the Des Moines Register, got fascinated by Coad's marital affairs. Last March, it seemed, Merwin Coad had traveled to Double Springs, Ala., and got a quickie divorce from his wife Delores. Then he returned to Washington and, in May, married his administrative assistant's former wife, a blonde ex-beauty queen (Miss Ogden, Utah, of 1954).

Poking around. Reporter Mollenhoff discovered that Coad had agreed to pay $300 a month to support his first wife and their four children, that he had recently purchased a new home in a Washington suburb, and that he was deeply in debt. Congressman Coad made some remarkable admissions. Even back in Iowa, Coad had been a grain speculator. Now, in Washington, as a member of the House Agriculture Committee, he continued playing the grain market. Coad claimed to Mollenhoff that it was obvious that he had not used inside information, since he had ended up losing money. Moreover, Coad had suffered heavy gambling losses, dropping as much as $2,000 in one after-hours poker session at Washington's Army and Navy Club, and he had bounced a $4,000 check on his account with the House sergeant at arms.

Last week Iowa's Coad was hurrying around trying to borrow enough money to square himself with the sergeant at arms. His political career plainly was nearing an end, and Coad knew it. Would he go back to being an Iowa minister? "I don't know," said Merwin Coad. "There are many things I have to think about."

There sure were.

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