Thomas K. Finletter

Early life

Finletter was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Thomas Dickson Finletter and Helen Grill Finletter. He was the grandson of Thomas K. Finletter, for whom the Thomas K. Finletter School in Philadelphia is named.

He took his early education at The Episcopal Academy in Philadelphia and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with both Bachelor of Arts degree in 1915 and bachelor of laws in 1920. He also served as editor-in-chief of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. In 1920, he married Gretchen Blaine Damrosch, daughter of the conductor Walter Damrosch and granddaughter of Secretary of State James G. Blaine.

Career

In World War I, he served with the 312th Field Artillery advancing to the rank of captain. He was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1920 and the New York Bar in 1921.

Finletter practiced law in New York until he began his government service in 1941, as a special assistant to Secretary of State Cordell Hull on international economic affairs. In 1943, he was appointed executive director and later deputy director of the Office of Foreign Economic Coordinator (OFEC). In this post, he was in charge of planning economic activities related to liberated areas and was in control of matters of foreign exchange and matters relating to the operations of the Alien Property Custodian. Finletter resigned his post in 1944, when the functions of OFEC were absorbed by the newly created Foreign Economic Administration.

In 1945, Finletter acted as consultant at the United Nations Conference on International Organization at San Francisco.

In the same year he was a cosigner of the "Declaration of the Dublin, N.H., Conference", a declaration on world peace issued by the Dublin Conference on World Peace. The declaration stated that the United Nations was inadequate to maintain world peace, and advocated a world federal government.

He returned back to public service July 18, 1947, when President Harry S. Truman established a temporary, five-man commission that inquired into all phases of aviation and drafted the national air policy report. This commission was sometimes known as "The Finletter Commission". Finletter served as chairman of the Air Policy Commission which, on January 1, 1948, sent to the president the report entitled "Survival in the Air Age."

Finletter was chief of the Economic Cooperation Administration's mission to the United Kingdom with headquarters in London, to which he had been appointed early in 1949.

Secretary of the Air Force

President Truman appointed Finletter as the second Secretary of the Air Force succeeding Stuart Symington on April 24, 1950, in which office he served until January 20, 1953.

In 1958, Finletter was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate from New York. He won the support of some liberal reformers, prominently including Eleanor Roosevelt, and was chosen as the Liberal Party's candidate, though the Democratic Convention preferred Frank Hogan. Finletter then withdrew from the Liberal ticket, endorsing Hogan.

Diplomatic service

President John F. Kennedy appointed Finletter to be the Ambassador to NATO to succeed William Henry Draper Jr. in 1961. He served in that office until 1965 when he was replaced by Harlan Cleveland.

Later life

In 1965, following his term as Ambassador to NATO, he retired from government service and returned to his law practice with the firm of Coudert Brothers, in New York City. In January 1967, he approached Senator Eugene McCarthy to see if he was interested in challenging Lyndon Johnson for the 1968 Democratic nomination for president, on the issue of the Vietnam War. McCarthy did go on to challenge Johnson, but failed to win the Democratic nomination. Finletter died on April 24, 1980.

Book

• Interim Report on the U.S. Search for a Substitute for Isolation, W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., New York: 1968

Political and Professional Affiliations

• Americans for Democratic Action
• Council on Foreign Relations
• United World Federalists
• Delta Phi

Notes

References

• The Truman Library
• The Political Graveyard
• U.S. Air Force, The Air and Space Power Journal
• Declaration of the Dublin, N.H., Conference
• Television News Archive, Vanderbilt University

References

1. "Home of the Eagle".
2. . (December 17, 1969). ["Mrs. Thomas K. Finletter Dead; Wrote of Her Damrosch Family"](https://www.nytimes.com/1969/12/17/archives/mrs-thomas-k-finletter-dead-wrote-of-her-damrosch-family.html). *New York Times Co.*.
3. "My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, July 28, 1958".
4. (29 August 1958). "FINLETTER BARS RACE AS LIBERAL; Urges Party to Back Hogan for Senator -- Decision to Be Made Next Week FINLETTER BARS RACE AS LIBERAL". [[The New York Times]].
5. "Eugene McCarthy and the Rise and Fall of Postwar American Liberalism".