Tom A. Yon

Who was Tom A. Yon?

Thomas Alva Yon was a U.S. Representative from Florida.

Yon was born near Blountstown, Florida. At the age of five his family moved to a farm in Jackson County, Florida. Yon attended rural schools and graduated from Lanier Southern Business College in Macon, Georgia, in 1903. He returned to Blountstown the same year and engaged in mercantile pursuits until 1906. He engaged as a traveling salesman at Tallahassee, Florida from 1906 to 1927. He served as delegate to the 1920 Democratic National Convention.

Yon was elected as a Democrat to the U.S. House of Representatives in the 1926 election, and was twice reelected, serving from March 4, 1927 to March 3, 1933, in the 70th, 71st, and 72nd Congresses. He was an unsuccessful candidate for renomination in 1932. He was a supporter of the building of Naval Air Station Pensacola.

Yon served as a special and commercial agent in the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce of the United States Department of Commerce in Washington, D.C. from 1933 to 1940. He served as assistant investigator in the Division of Investigation of the General Accounting Office from 1941 until his retirement in January 1946. Yon engaged in development and sale of his Florida real estate holdings after retirement. He died in Tallahassee, Florida in 1971, and was interred in Oakland Cemetery.