Archives West Finding Aid

Frances Wheeler Sayler (1916-1957) was the second youngest daughter of Montana Senator Burton Kendall Wheeler. She met Allen Sayler (1909-1989) while investigating labor practices for the LaFollette Committee in the late 1930s. Allen had been working with the FCC, and Frances was on loan from the Women's Labor Board. They both went on to work with unions, and Allen set up a radio station for the United Auto Workers in the Midwest. He later chaired the Wallace campaign for president in Michigan in 1948. Frances continued her political activities as a labor worker and a member of the Committee to End the Poll Tax, challenging discriminatory practices in Maryland and elsewhere. The couple was investigated by the FBI as a result of their work, and Frances, along with her father, gave testimony to the House UnAmerican Activities Committee in the early 1950s. In addition to her career as a labor worker, Frances began researching and writing a biography of her father after his retirement from the U.S. Senate in 1946. The manuscript was never fully completed before Frances' death in April, 1957, but it provided the base for Yankee from the West, Burton K. Wheeler's autobiography written in 1962. In 1957 Allen moved his children to Phoenix, Arizona where he worked as an advertising salesman for a radio station owned by Wheeler's son Richard. He also returned to graduate school in Arizona to qualify as a high school teacher. Allen kept up a correspondence with his father-in-law during his years in Arizona in which they exchanged both family news and political opinions.