C. Douglas Dillon

Dillon was born on August 21, 1909, in Geneva, Switzerland, the son of American parents, Anne McEldin (née Douglass) and financier Clarence Dillon. Although Dillon grew up as a patrician, his paternal grandfather, Samuel Lapowski, was a poor Jewish emigrant from Poland.[3] After leaving Poland, his grandfather settled in Texas after the American Civil War and married Dillon's Swedish-American grandmother. Dillon's father later changed his family name to Dillon, an Anglicization of "Dylion", his grandmother's maiden name.[3] Dillon's mother was descended from the Graham family, Lairds of Tamrawer Castle at Kilsyth, Stirling, Scotland.

Dillon began his education at Pine Lodge School in Lakehurst, New Jersey, which he attended at the same time as three of the Rockefeller brothers, Nelson, Laurance, and John. He continued at Groton School in Massachusetts, then at Harvard University, A.B. magna cum laude 1931 in American history and literature.[3][4] Dillon earned a varsity letter for football his senior year.[5]

In 1938, be became Vice-President and Director of Dillon, Read & Co., a firm that bore his father's name (Clarence Dillon). After his World War II service on Guam, on Saipan, and in the Philippines, he left the United States Navy as Lieutenant Commander decorated with the Legion of Merit and Air Medal. In 1946 he became chairman of Dillon, Read; by 1952 he had doubled the firm's investments.[2]

Political career

Dillon had been active in Republican politics since 1934. He worked for John Foster Dulles in Thomas E. Dewey's 1948 presidential campaign. In 1951 he organized the New Jersey effort to secure the 1952 Republican nomination for Dwight D. Eisenhower. He was also a major contributor to Eisenhower's general election campaign in 1952.[2]

President Eisenhower appointed him United States Ambassador to France in 1953. Following that appointment he became Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs in 1958 before becoming Under Secretary of State the following year.[6]

Dillon and Kennedy in August 1961. Dillon had just returned from the conference in Uruguay in which the Alliance for Progress was formalized, and where Dillon did battle with Che Guevara.[7]

In 1961, John F. Kennedy, appointed Republican Dillon Treasury Secretary. Dillon remained Treasury Secretary under President Lyndon B. Johnson until 1965.

Dillon proposed the fifth round of tariff negotiations under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), conducted in Geneva 1960–1962; it came to be called the "Dillon Round" and led to substantial tariff reduction. Dillon was important in securing presidential power for reciprocal tariff reductions under the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. He also played a role in crafting the Revenue Act of 1962, which established a 7 percent investment credit to spur industrial growth. He supervised revision of depreciation rules to benefit corporate investment.

On March 10, 1931, Dillon married the former Phyllis Chess Ellsworth (1910–1982)[lower-alpha 1] in Boston, Massachusetts. Phyllis was the daughter of John Chess Ellsworth[11] and Alice Frances Chalifoux. The couple had two daughters:

• Phyllis Ellsworth Dillon Collins
• Joan Douglas Dillon (b. 1935), former president of French Bordeaux wine company Domaine Clarence Dillon.

In 1983, the widowed Dillon married the former Susan "Suzzie" Slater (1917-2018). She had first been married to Theodore "Ted" Sheldon Bassett (1911-1983) in 1939 (div.). In 1949 she married British entertainer Jack Buchanan (1891-1957). In 1961 she wed DeWitt Linn Sage (1905-1982), who again left her a widow.

Dillon died of natural causes on January 10, 2003, at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City at the age of 93.[9]

In the Brendan DuBois novel Resurrection Day (1999), the Cuban Missile Crisis erupts into a full-scale nuclear war and Washington, D.C. is destroyed. President Kennedy is killed, as is Vice President Johnson, most of the Senate and Congress, and most members of the Kennedy administration. Dillon, the Secretary of the Treasury, is eventually found to have survived the war and becomes the 36th President of the United States.

• List of U.S. political appointments that crossed party lines
• Rockefeller Foundation
• Rockefeller family
• Metropolitan Museum

Notes

Sources

• Nelson Lichtenstein, ed., Political Profiles: The Johnson Years (1976)
• Eleanora W. Schoenebaum, ed., Political Profiles: The Eisenhower Years (1977)
• Bernard S. Katz and C. Daniel Vencill, Biographical Dictionary of the United States Secretaries of the Treasury, 1789–1995 (1996)
• Joseph M. Siracusa, ed., Presidential Profiles: The Kennedy Years (2004)
• Deane F. Heller, The Kennedy Cabinet: America's Men of Destiny (1961)
• Robert Sobel, The Life and Times of Dillon Read (1991), a study of the investment bank
• Robert C. Perez and Edward F. Willett, Clarence Dillon: A Wall Street Enigma (1995), a biography of Dillon's father.

• Ancestry of Joan Douglas Dillon

Diplomatic posts
Preceded by James Clement Dunn	U.S. Ambassador to France March 13, 1953 – January 28, 1957	Succeeded by Amory Houghton
Government offices
Preceded by William L. Clayton	Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs July 1, 1958 – June 11, 1959	Succeeded by George Wildman Ball
Preceded by Christian Herter	Under Secretary of State June 12, 1959 – January 4, 1961	Succeeded by Chester Bowles
Preceded by Robert B. Anderson	U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Served under: John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson January 21, 1961 – April 1, 1965	Succeeded by Henry H. Fowler
Cultural offices
Preceded by Arthur Amory Houghton Jr.	President of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 1970-1977	Succeeded by William B. Macomber, Jr.