Harold Himmel Velde was born in Tazewell County, Illinois, on April 1, 1910. He graduated from Northwestern University in Evanston in 1931. An athletic coach at Hillsdale Community High School, he studied law at the University of Illinois before being admitted to the bar in 1937 and commenced the practice of law in Pekin, Illinois. During World War II, Velde served as a private in the Signal Corps of the United States Army until 1943 when he was appointed a special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in its sabotage and counter-espionage division. A member of the Republican Party, Velde was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1949. He was named chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1953 at the height of investigations into suspected Communist infiltration. Velde retired from politics in 1956 and returned to the practice of law in Urbana, Illinois, and Washington, D.C. He became regional counsel for the General Services Administration in Lansing, Illinois, in 1969. Velde died in Sun City, Arizona on September 1, 1985.
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