The Honorable Henry H. Fowler was a native of Roanoke, Virginia, where he was born in 1908, attended Jefferson High School, and graduated from Roanoke College in 1929. His legal training was acquired at Yale Law School from which he received his LL.B. degree in 1932, and the J.S.D. degree in 1933. He spent one year as a junior associate in the law firm of Covington, Burling, and Rublee in Washington, D.C., before entering upon a twelve-year period of government service.
Under Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, Mr. Fowler had a varied and distinguished career. From 1934 until 1946, he served in the following capacities: Assistant General Counsel with the Tennessee Valley Authority specializing in constitutional litigation; Special Assistant to the Attorney General; Special Counsel fro the Federal Power Commission; Chief Counsel of the U.S. Senate Civil Liberties Committees; Assistant General Counsel of the War Production Board. He also served as special advisor to Averill Harriman of the U.S. Mission for Economic Affairs in London, England, which coordinated Lend-Lease between the United States and Great Britain. In addition, he also served in a top legal capacity under General Lucius Clay in Germany.
Mr. Fowler organized his own law firm of Folwer, Leva, Hawes, and Symington in 1946 to specialize in corporate and public law. In September, 1951, President Truman summoned him back to public service as Deputy Administrator of the national Production Authority. He succeeded Manly Fleischmann in 1952 as Defense Production Administrator, and was named head of the Office of Defense Mobilization in September, 1952. He served until the end of the Truman Administration in that capacity, after which he resumed his private law practice in Washington, D.C.
Henry H. Fowler received the Roanoke College Medal in 1967.