Walter Sherman Gifford

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Walter Sherman Gifford (1917)

Walter Sherman Gifford (born January 10, 1885 in Salem , Massachusetts ; † May 7, 1966 in New York City ) was an American business manager and diplomat , who was president of the telecommunications company AT&T between 1925 and 1948 and ambassador from 1950 to 1953 the United States was in the United Kingdom .

Life

Walter Sherman Gifford was one of nine children of the timber merchant Nathan Poole Gifford and his wife, who worked as a teacher. After attending school, he began an undergraduate degree at Harvard University in 1902 , which he completed in 1905 with a Bachelor of Arts (BA). He then worked from 1905 to 1911 as a payroll clerk and economics expert at the telecommunications company Western Electric . In 1911 he moved to the parent company AT&T , where he was initially chief statistician between 1911 and 1916. During the First World War , he served from 1916 to 1918 as an advisor to the Council of National Defense . After the end of the war, he returned to AT&T and was controller from 1918 to 1919 and vice president of finance from 1919 to 1923. He then served as Executive Vice-President from 1923 to 1925 , before he finally succeeded Harry Bates Thayer (1858–1936) as President of the telecommunications company AT&T in 1925 . He held this position for 23 years until 1948, when he was replaced by Leroy A. Wilson.

Walter Sherman Gifford (right) at a reception given by US President Harry S. Truman (1952)

Gifford was also from 1931 to 1932 director of the of US President Herbert Hoover established President's Organization for Unemployment Relief , dedicated to the elimination of during the Great Depression caused unemployment dealt. He was also chairman of the AT&T board of directors from 1948 to 1950, and was a temporary member of the boards of the First National Bank of New York and US Steel . He was also a trustee of the American Red Cross , the Carnegie Institution for Science , the Metropolitan Museum of Art , the National Geographic Society , the Rockefeller Foundation , Johns Hopkins University and the Cooper Union . Furthermore, he was active as chairman of the board of the Community Service Society of New York, board member of the English-Speaking Union (ESU) and the American Philosophical Society (APS) and member of the advisory board of Tuskegee University .

On December 12, 1950, Walter Sherman Gifford was appointed as the successor to Lewis Williams Douglas as Ambassador of the United States to the United Kingdom and delivered his credentials on December 21, 1950 . He remained in this post until January 23, 1953 and was then replaced by Winthrop W. Aldrich .

Gifford has been married twice. His first marriage to Florence Pitman, divorced in 1929, resulted in two sons, Walter S. Gifford, Jr. and Richard Gifford. In 1944 he married Augustine Lloyd Perry for the second time. After his death he was buried in the Middle Patent Rural Cemetery in Bedford .

publication

  • Addresses, papers and interviews , 1928

Web links

Commons : Walter Sherman Gifford  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Chiefs of Mission for United Kingdom on the homepage of the Office of the Historian of the US State Department
personal data
SURNAME Gifford, Walter Sherman
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American business manager and diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH January 10, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Salem , Massachusetts
DATE OF DEATH May 7, 1966
Place of death New York City