W. Averell Harriman
Encyclopedia : W : WA : WAV : W. Averell Harriman
William Averell Harriman (November 15, 1891 – July 26, 1986) was a US Democratic politician, businessman and diplomat.
Averell Harriman was born in New York City, the son of railroad baron Edward Henry Harriman and Mary Williamson Averell, and brother to E. Roland Harriman. He attended Groton School in Massachusetts before going on to Yale where he joined the Skull and Bones society. His first marriage was to Kitty Lanier Lawrence, who died in 1936. He subsequently married Marie Norton Whitney, who left her husband Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney to marry Harriman. His third and final marriage was to Pamela Beryl Digby, the former wife of Winston Churchill's son Randolph, and of Broadway producer Leland Hayward.
Political career
Averell Harriman (center) with Winston Churchill (right) and Vyacheslav Molotov (left)
Harriman served President Franklin Roosevelt as special envoy to Europe, and was present at the meeting between Winston Churchill and the US president at Placentia Bay in August of 1941. The outcome of this five-day meeting became known as the Atlantic Charter, a common declaration of principles of the US and the UK. He served as the US Ambassador to Soviet Union between 1943 and 1946 and the Ambassador to Britain in 1946. He was later appointed the United States Secretary of Commerce under President Harry Truman to replace Henry A. Wallace, a critic of Truman's foreign policies. Harriman served between 1946 and 1948. He was sent to Tehran in July 1951 to mediate between Persia and Britain in the wake of the Persian nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company [link].
In the 1954 race to succeed Republican Thomas Dewey as Governor of New York, Harriman defeated Dewey's protege, Irving M. Ives. He served as governor for one term until Republican Nelson Rockefeller defeated him in 1958. Harriman was a candidate for the Democratic Presidential Nomination in 1952, and again in 1956 when he was endorsed by Harry S. Truman but lost to Adlai Stevenson.
Harriman was appointed Ambassador at Large in the Kennedy administration, a position he held until November 1961. He was then appointed Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs. He remained in that position until April 1963, when he became Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. He continued in that position in the Lyndon Johnson administration, until March 1965 when he again became Ambassador at Large, a position he would hold for the remainder of Johnson's presidency. Harriman was the chief US negotiator at the Paris peace talks on Vietnam.
Harriman is noted for supporting, on behalf of the state department, the coup against Vietnam president Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963. LBJ's confession in the assassination of Diem could indicate some complicity on Harriman's part ([link], [link]).
Harriman received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969. He graduated from Yale University in 1913. Harriman was initiated into the Skull and Bones Society, along with his friend Prescott Bush. He also served as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Business Affairs
Using money from his father, in 1922 he established W.A. Harriman & Co, a banking business. In 1927 his brother E. Roland Harriman joined the business and the name was changed to Harriman Brothers & Company. In 1931 they merged with Brown Bros. & Co. to create the highly successful Brown Brothers Harriman & Co.. Notable employees include George Herbert Walker, and Prescott Bush, who were likewise employed alongside E.R. Harriman at Union Banking Corporation (UBC), a company which was closed in 1943 by the US Government for Trading with the Enemy.http://www.nhgazette.com/cgi-bin/NHGstore.cgi?user_action=detail&catalogno=NN_Bush_Nazi_2Harriman's main properties included: Brown Brothers & Harriman & Co; Union Pacific Railroad; Merchant Shipping Corporation; and various venture capital investments including Polaroid.
Harriman's associated properties included: Southern Pacific Railroad (including the Central Pacific Railroad), Illinois Central Railroad; Wells Fargo & Co; Pacific Mail Steamship Co.; American Shipping & Commerce (HAPAG), American Hawaiian Steamship Co., United American Lines Co; Guarantee Trust Company and the Union Banking Corporation.
He died aged 94 in 1986 in Yorktown Heights, New York.
Summary of career
- Vice President, Union Pacific Railroad Co., 1915-1917
- Director, Illinois Central Railroad Co., 1915-1946
- Member, Palisades Interstate Park Commission, 1915-1954
- Chairman, Merchant Shipbuilding Corp.,1917-1925
- Chairman, W. A. Harriman & Company, 1920-1931
- Partner, Soviet Georgian Manganese Concessions, 1925-1928
- Chairman, executive committee, Illinois Central Railroad, 1931-1942
- Senior partner, Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., 1931-1946
- Chairman, Union Pacific Railroad, 1932-1946
- Co-founded Today magazine with Vincent Astor, 1935-1937 (merged with Newsweek in 1937)
- Administrator and Special Assistant, National Recovery Administration, 1934-1935
- Founded, Sun Valley Ski Resort, Idaho, 1935-1936
- Chairman, Business Advisory Council, 1937-1939
- Chief, Materials Branch & Production Division, Office of Production Management, 1941
- US Ambassador & Special Representative to the Prime Minister of Britain, 1941-1943
- Chairman, Ambassador & Special Representative of the US President's Special Mission to the USSR, 1941-1943
- US Ambassador to the USSR, 1943-1946
- US Ambassador, Britain, 1946
- US Secretary of Commerce, 1946-1948
- United States Coordinator, European Recovery Program (Marshall Plan), 1948-1950
- Special Assistant to the US President, 1950-1952
- US Representative and Chairman, North Atlantic Commission on Defense Plans, 1951-1952
- Director, Mutual Security Agency, 1951-1953
- Candidate, Democratic nomination for US President, 1952
- Governor, State of New York, 1955-1959
- Candidate, Democratic nomination for US President, 1956
- US Ambassador-at-large, 1961
- United States Deputy Representative, International Conference on the Settlement of the Laotian, 1961-1962
- Assistant US Secretary of State, Far Eastern Affairs, 1961-1963
- Special Representative to the US President, Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, 1963
- Under US Secretary of State, Political Affairs, 1963-1965
- US Ambassador-at-large, 1965-1969
- Chairman, President's Commission of the Observance of Human Rights Year, 1968
- Personal Representative of the US President, Peace Talks with North Vietnam, 1968-1969
- Chairman, Foreign Policy Task Force, Democratic National Committee, 1976
- Member, American Academy of Diplomacy Charter, Club of Rome, Council on Foreign Relations, Knights of Pythias, Skull and Bones Society, Psi Upsilon Fraternity and the Jupiter Island Club.
See also
Papers of W. Averell Harriman, Library of Congress, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/eadmss.ms003012.3
|- style="text-align: center;" |- style="text-align: center;"
| United States Secretaries of Commerce |
|
|---|---|
| United States Secretary of Commerce and Labor>Secretaries of Commerce & Labor (1903–1913): Cortelyou | Metcalf | Straus | Nagel |
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.