Raymond Blaine Fosdick

Raymond Blaine Fosdick (“Blain” was a family name, and Ray’s father added the terminal e because of his admiration of James G. Blaine) came of a long line of Puritan ancestors.

Ray’s first two years at college, beginning in 1901, were spent at Colgate, where his brother Harry had preceded him; excited by what he heard about the courses in jurisprudence and international law offered at Princeton by its new president, Woodrow Wilson, Ray became anxious to transfer to Princeton.

On his third day at Princeton, as Ray was walking across the campus, he encountered Wilson, and following the custom at Colgate, Ray tipped his hat to the president. Wilson smiled, took off his hat, and said, “You are new here, aren’t you?” “Yes, sir,” Ray replied. The new student and the new president chatted for a moment, and Wilson concluded, “I wish you would drop in and see me.” Such a procedure also being traditional at Colgate, Ray took the suggestion seriously, and a week or two later, he called on President Wilson, thus beginning a relationship, often close and even intimate, which continued until Wilson’s death twenty years later.

After graduation, offered a fellowship in history, and urged by Wilson to “take this year to read,” Fosdick had a carefree, mind-stretching, and happy year. He was offered a second fellowship, this one involving travel, but he declined it. Eager to get into social work of some kind, he moved to New York City, associated himself with the Henry Street Settlement, and enrolled in night classes at the New York Law School.

At the end of the year he accidentally encountered Mayor McClellan on a ferry boat, and was offered a summer job in the office of John Purroy Mitchel, the Commissioner of Accounts. In June, 1908, he graduated from the law school and passed the state bar examinations. His career in the political field progressed rapidly, and in January, 1910, he was made the new Commissioner of Accounts of New York City, with an assignment from Judge William J. Gaynor, who had recently become mayor under a Fusion ticket, to “get after the crooks in New York City, whether they are members of Tammany Hall, the Republican Party, the Citizens Union, or Dr. Parkhurst’s church!”

For two years Fosdick was caught up in the complex web of political activity of New York City, being responsible for investigating a tangled mess of graft and corruption in essentially all aspects of the city’s management. Shortly thereafter, he accepted an offer from Woodrow Wilson to be the controller and auditor of the finance committee of the Democratic National Committee.

At the close of the then current political campaign, Fosdick accepted an assignment that was to affect the remainder of his life. He had met John D. Rockefeller, Jr., in 1910 when the latter was chairman of a special grand jury in Manhattan which was investigating the white slave traffic. Rockefeller, after discussions with Fosdick as to ways of controlling this evil, set up the Bureau of Social Hygiene, and sent Abraham Flexner to Europe to study how the problem was handled there. Flexner became convinced that there was little hope of making progress unless and until significant improvement could be made in police administration. Accordingly, Mr. Rockefeller asked Fosdick to undertake a study of European methods of police administration—a subject to which he had been intimately exposed in his service as an official in New York City. This supposedly rather short-term study stretched out to four years and finally led to his appointment by President Wilson to the chairmanship of the Commission on Training Camp Activities in World War I.

This activity brought him into extensive and intimate contact with Newton D. Baker and with the top officers of all branches of the military service, and at times it required his presence at the front lines. He longed to be in uniform, but Secretary Baker emphatically forbade this, and Fosdick was made, at the specific request of the Secretary of War, a civilian aide to General Pershing, carrying out for the general a number of important studies of conditions in various camps, especially of the morale problems of the soldiers.

When Woodrow Wilson presented the preliminary draft of a covenant to the Paris Peace Conference in February, 1919, this document contained the plan for the League of Nations. Three months later Wilson asked Fosdick to be the Under Secretary of the League of Nations.

The subsequent months were bitter and trying ones for Fosdick. Wilson’s illness, and the Senate’s refusal to join in the ratification of the treaty establishing the League of Nations, forced Fosdick, to his great pain, to resign his post. He returned to New York City, and with his friends James C. Curtis (who had been Assistant Secretary of the Treasury) and Chauncey Belknap (who had been a secretary to Mr. Justice Holmes) he formed a law firm. Their first client was John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

He served Mr. Rockefeller in many capacities—as a member of the executive committees of the numerous foundations established by John D. Rockefeller, Sr.; representing him on the boards of numerous companies; and, perhaps most important of all, advising him on his personal philanthropic projects.

Fosdick’s dedication to socially significant activities, his wide acquaintance, his legal and administrative experience and skill, fitted him perfectly for the role which he was to play in the guidance of the many-faceted activities of the Rockefeller family. Both the junior and senior Rockefellers knew that they could trust him to tell them the truth exactly as he saw it. Men with great fortunes and great power characteristically have to struggle against the danger that their advisers will tell them what they think their patrons wish to hear, rather than the plain, undecorated truth. That was never a problem between Fosdick and the various members of the family which he served so long and so well.

Fosdick’s remaining years can almost wholly be identified with the growth and interrelationship of the great Rockefeller philanthropies. He was made president of the Rockefeller Foundation in 1936 and served as trustee and officer for over twenty-seven years.

In 1932 he was subjected to an unbelievable tragedy when his wife, in an insane moment, killed both their children and then herself. Plunging with never weakening vigor into the redeeming comfort of his work, he furnished uniquely wise and stimulating leadership. The writer of these lines became associated with Ray at the time of his family tragedy, and the courage and character he displayed then, the kindliness and inspiring nature of his personal relations with all the officers and staff of the Rockefeller Foundation, are, for all of us who worked with him then, unforgettable and precious memories.

Ray Fosdick had so warm and so friendly a personality that the whole atmosphere within the staff of the Rockefeller Foundation changed when he became president. He had a sense of humor that frequently came to the surface. Late one afternoon he came down the long hall from his office to mine to tell me, with obvious glee, that the president of a Midwestern university, after terminating an appointment to discuss his institution’s needs, came back to Ray’s office, rather timidly rapped on the door, and then said, “Dr. Fosdick, I simply cannot leave without telling you how much I enjoyed your sermon last Sunday.” “I can’t wait to tell Harry about this!” said Ray. He had great respect and affection for his famous minister brother, but Ray did not, so far as I know, ever take any active interest in churchgoing.

In April, 1936, Ray married Elizabeth R. Miner. In view of the almost incredibly tragic character of his previous family life, it is a real joy to record that his marriage to Betty was clearly an ideally happy and rewarding one, their home at Newton, Connecticut, being to all of us who had the privilege to know it, a place of refined comfort and enviable peace, intelligence and love, a fitting and deserved reward for his long and arduous life of service.

It will be noted that in most of his activities he dealt almost daily with Centurions, from Woodrow Wilson to the present writer.

Warren Weaver
1973 Century Association Yearbook