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U.S. Medal of Freedom Recipient Christian A. Herter
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U.S. Medal of Freedom Recipient Christian A. Herter
CHRISTIAN ARCHIBALD HERTER, United States Secretary of State from 1959 to 1961, was recognized public servant. During his long and distinguished public career, he was a diplomat, a congressman, and governor of Massachusetts. He was highly praised by President Dwight Eisenhower, who said, "When you look at him, you know you are looking at an honest man." Secretary Herter, who died in 1967, received an honorary doctor of laws degree from Hopkins in 1961.
CENTENNIAL OF THE BIRTH OF CHRISTIAN A. HERTER (Senate - April 04, 1995)
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, March 28, 1995, marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of Christian A. Herter, one of Massachusetts' and the Nation's most respected leaders and public officials in this century.
After a distinguished early career in the Foreign Service, Chris Herter returned to Massachusetts and was elected to the State legislature in 1930 at the age of 35. In the next 6 year, he rose to become speaker of the house, and 4 years later, he was elected to the House of Representatives, where he played an influential role in making the Marshall plan a reality.
In 1952, the same year President Kennedy was elected to the U.S. Senate, Chris Herter was elected Governor of Massachusetts. After serving two terms, he accepted the position of Under Secretary of State under John Foster Dulles in the Eisenhower administration, and succeeded Dulles as Secretary of State in 1959. President Kennedy thought so highly of him that he appointed him to be U.S. Special Trade Representative in 1961, and the GATT Agreement still stands as one of his greatest monuments.
Christian Herter was admired and respected by leaders and citizens alike in Massachusetts, America, and throughout the world. On this occasion of the centennial of his birth, Emanuel Goldberg, who served on his staff as Governor, has written an eloquent tribute to this extraordinary son of Massachusetts, and I ask unanimous consent that it may be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the tribute was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows: Centennial of Chris Herter
(BY EMANUEL GOLDBERG)
He was one of the Commonwealth's most highly regarded and distinguished public servants, on a tri-level of state, national and international affairs, yet if you questioned people today--senior citizens possibly excepted--I doubt if one in 10 could lucidly recall Christian A. Herter of Millis and Manchester.
Last March 28, 1995 was the 100th anniversary of Chris Herter's birth, actually in Paris where his artist parents lived abroad. Twice he became not only a serious presidential prospect when `Dump Nixon' drives were surfacing but, in Massachusetts, served as Governor and Speaker of the House and, in Washington, as an outstanding Congressman, Secretary of State in the Eisenhower administration and the first U.S. Trade Negotiator for both Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. There is a state scholarship fund in his name--rarely publicized because his family rejected a brick and mortar memorial and preferred practical direct help to needy students. Thanks to former MDC Commissioner John W. Sears, there is also a public park, near Harvard Stadium (Herter's alma mater), named for him. Also an academic chair in international relations at Brandeis and Herter Hall at U. Mass-Amherst.
The 1952 gubernatorial election was memorable when underdog Herter in a close election, defeated by 14,500 votes the powerful Democratic incumbent Paul A. Dever. The major campaign issue revolved about Dever's outgoing public works commissioner, Bill Callahan, whose heralded highway program was attacked by Republicans as the most costly in the nation, as well as two and a half times more than the next highest state.
The Herter program for Massachusetts was highly and quickly successful because in just one year after taking office, the new administration got through most of its legislative program and also a 25 percent tax reduction in earned income. TIME put Herter on its magazine cover; also labeled him `to millions, a hero' (1/18/54). That year he was the only U.S. governor to produce such dramatic tax savings.
In the late 1940's, while a Congressman, Herter chaired a 19-member delegation that toured 18 foreign countries to lay the foundations for the Marshall Plan. He later won the 1948 Collier's Magazine award as the outstanding Congressman for that historic undertaking. Ironically, then Congressman Richard M. Nixon served on Herter's diligent and highly productive committee. The generous Collier's prize money was later donated by Herter to Washington's Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies, an institution he was a prime mover in founding.
The awkward 6 5" angularity of Chris Herter caused his military rejection in 1917 (he later suffered from severe arthritis) but catapulted him at once into public service. He served President Wilson at the Versailles Peace Conference, in 1918-1919, as Secretary of the American Peace Commission. Following an attache post in Germany's American Embassy, he found himself, at age 22, operating the American legation in Brussels.
Thence commenced a close association with Herbert Hoover--Herter becoming at first the future President's principal assistant as executive secretary of the Europe Relief Council and later, when Hoover was named U.S. Secretary of Commerce in 1921,
his personal assistant.
On a personal level, the jovial, modest Herter, who frequently assuaged his arthritic back pain with bufferin and a cigarette, nevertheless was a fisherman, boatsman, gentleman farmer, breeder of golden retrievers and an expert bridge player. He was one of the Boston Red Sox's greatest fans and reveled in the Governor's prerogative of throwing out the first baseball of the season. One scheduled April opening day, when it actually snowed in Boston, causing the game to be cancelled, this frustrated Governor intentionally messed up a preplanned photo assignment by heaving a huge snowball at (and hitting) this writer, who was supposedly supervising a substitute news picture. My recollection is that simultaneously a distinguished, newly-formed Educational TV Commission was just entering the Governor's office--and its VIP members were quite perplexed to encounter an embarrassed, snow-covered young assistant and a hilariously-roaring chief executive.
Actually, Herter was very considerate about his staff's welfare. He was capable, even when busy, of phoning the switchboard operator to inquire about her cold. On one occasion, long after he'd left the Governor's office. Herter traveled from Washington to help a former staff state trooper, who'd encounterd some job difficulty in Boston.
Testament to his wide popularity on both sides of the political aisle, when the Undersecretary Chris Herter was nominated by President Eisenhower to succeed John Foster Dulles as U.S. Secretary of State, the Senate on April 21, 1959, approved the appointment in 4 hours and 13 minutes. The Senate had suspended its usual confirmation rule of requiring a minimum of seven days.
Family-wise, Herter's father, Albert, an internationally renowned artist, created the huge murals now hanging in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. His older brother, Everit, was killed by German shrapnel in World War I. He married the former Mary Caroline Pratt, granddaughter of one of Standard Oil's founders, for whom a memorial garden as been affectionately dedicated in the MDC's Herter Park.
Chris and `Mac' Herter had four children; Chirstian A. Herter Jr., now teaching at the Hopkins School, who also once served in the Massachusetts legislature; Dr. Frederic P. Herter, a prominent physician at New York's Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital (medicine has also been a long family tradition for an uncle, also named Christian Herter, founded the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York, while a young student named Jonas Salk was helped through his doctoral training via a Herter scholarship); E. Miles Herter of Manchester, prominent for years in the Boston financial community, and Mrs. Joseph (Adele) Seronde, wife of a pathologist and a widely admired artist now residing in Arizona. She, collaborating with Kathy Kane, was responsible for bringing `Summerthing' to Boston and also originating the outdoor murals that are now emulated throughout the nation.
Chris Herter, boots on at 71, was victim of a heart attack on December 30, 1966, while still U.S. Trade Negotiator. Ironically, a day before his passing, Herter, an ardent proponent of free trade, was cheered by news that Britain was lifting tariff restrictions among the European Free Trade Association.
Though William F. Buckley, Jr. and Chris Herter (a GOP Young Turk type) were probably at opposite ends of the Republican spectrum, I know of no-one who more precisely summarized Herter's essence than this noted conservative. In a private letter, Bill Buckley commented that Herter was `a reminder of how civilized the world used to be.'
There is a gap: no scholar has yet written a definitive biography about Chris Herter's multi-faceted contribution to history and the public welfare. His gigantic stature, both in size and character, will always remind us that moral and intellectual integrity can flower even in American politics.
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Medal History
