Buchanan, Vera Daerr (1902–1955)

U.S. Representative, Democrat of Pennsylvania, 82nd–84th Congresses, July 24, 1951–November 26, 1955. Born Vera Daerr in Wilson, Pennsylvania, on July 20, 1902; died in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, on November 26, 1955. married Frank Buchanan (Congressman 1946–1951), in 1929.

Vera Buchanan was sworn in as a member of Congress on August 1, 1951, after winning a special election to fill a vacancy left by her husband's death the previous April. She defeated Republican nominee, McKeesport city controller Clifford W. Flegal, whose sharp criticism of President Harry S. Truman and the foreign policy of Secretary of State Dean Acheson cost him the election. Buchanan was reelected twice by her largely Democratic, pro-labor constituency.

Growing up in Duquesne, Pennsylvania, Vera Daerr Buchanan attended public and parochial schools. After her marriage in 1929, she ran a beauty shop in McKeesport and was active in the Democratic Women's Guild. Her husband, after serving a term as mayor of McKeesport, was elected to Congress in 1946 and had employed Vera as his secretary.

Vera Buchanan's terms in Congress were marked by service on the Committee on Merchant Marines and Fisheries, the Committee on Banking and Currency, and the Committee on Public Works. Staunchly behind the Truman administration, she supported unions and the rights of laborers, and backed housing legislation and the Turtle Creek Valley Flood Control Project.