Kingman Brewster
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His Excellency Kingman Brewster Jr. |
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|---|---|
Kingman Brewster Jr.
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| United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom | |
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In office June 3, 1977 – February 23, 1981 |
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| Monarch | Elizabeth II |
| President |
Jimmy Carter Ronald Reagan |
| Prime Minister |
James Callaghan Margaret Thatcher |
| Preceded by | Anne Armstrong |
| Succeeded by | John J. Louis Jr. |
| 8th Provost of Yale University | |
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In office 1960–1963 |
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| Preceded by | Norman Sidney Buck |
| Succeeded by | Charles H. Taylor Jr. |
| 17th President of Yale University | |
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In office 1963–1977 |
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| Preceded by | A. Whitney Griswold |
| Succeeded by | Hanna Holborn Gray |
| Master of University College, Oxford | |
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In office 1986–1988 |
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| Preceded by | Arnold Goodman |
| Succeeded by | John Albery |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
June 17, 1919 Longmeadow, Massachusetts |
| Died | November 8, 1988 (aged 69) Oxford, England |
| Resting place | Grove Street Cemetery |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouse(s) | Mary Louise Phillips |
| Children | Constance Kingman, 3rd Deborah Alden Riley |
| Parents | Kingman Brewster Sr. Florence Foster Besse |
| Alma mater |
Yale University Harvard Law School |
| Occupation | Educator University President Diplomat |
Kingman Brewster Jr. (June 17, 1919 – November 8, 1988) was an educator, president of Yale University, and American diplomat.
Brewster was born in Longmeadow, Massachusetts, the son of Florence Foster (née Besse), a 1907 Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Wellesley College, and Kingman Brewster, Sr., a 1906 Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Amherst College and a 1911 graduate of the Harvard Law School. He was a direct lineal descendant of Elder William Brewster (c. 1567 - April 10, 1644), the Mayflower passenger, Pilgrim colonist leader, and spiritual elder of the Plymouth Colony, through his son Jonathan Brewster; he was also descended from Mayflower passenger John Howland. He was a grandson of Charles Kingman Brewster and Celina Sophia Baldwin, and Lyman Waterman Besse and Henrietta Louisa Segee. His maternal grandfather, Lyman W. Besse, owned an extensive chain of clothing stores in the Northeast known as "The Besse System."
In 1923, when he was 4, his parents separated and later divorced. He and his surviving sister, Mary, were raised by their mother first in Springfield, Massachusetts and later in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His mother was a firm influence but never overbearing. One of Brewster's friends characterized her as "one of those people whose presence you always felt when she was in the room". Another friend remembered that "she knew poetry, she knew music, she knew art, she knew architecture, and believe me, she knew Kingman."
Brewster wrote that his mother was a "marvelously speculative and philosophical type," a "free-thinking spirit...given to far-out enthusiasms and delighting in sprightly arguments with her more intellectually conventional friends.
His mother remarried in 1932 to Edward Ballantine, a music professor at Harvard University and composer she had known since childhood. Brewster was, however, without a real father role, until his uncle, Arthur Besse, stepped into that role. Besse was by all accounts a very good surrogate father; one of Besse's sons described him as "a man of tremendous warmth and honesty, a generous and wonderfully moral person." Brewster described his stepfather as "marvelous, and sensitive to the point of vulnerability." Besse had no children of his own and did not want to play a fatherly role.
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