Owen D. Young
| Owen D. Young | |
|---|---|
Young as Time Person of the Year
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| Born | October 27, 1874 |
| Died | July 11, 1962 (aged 87) |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | industrialist, businessman, lawyer and diplomat |
Owen D. Young (October 27, 1874 – July 11, 1962) was an American industrialist, businessman, lawyer and diplomat at the Second Reparations Conference (SRC) in 1929, as a member of the German Reparations International Commission.
He is best known for his SRC diplomacy and for founding the Radio Corporation of America. Young founded RCA as a subsidiary of General Electric in 1919; he became its first chairman and continued in that position until 1929.
Owen D. Young was born on October 27, 1874 on a small farmhouse in Stark, New York. His parents’ names were Jacob Smith Young and Ida Brandow and they worked the farm that his grandfather owned. Owen was an only child, his parents lost their first born son before he was born, and his birth was something rejoiced. He was the first male of the family to have a name that was not biblical since they had first arrived in 1750, driven from the Palatinate on the Rhine in Germany by constant war and religious persecution. They were taken in by the Protestant Queen Anne in England, sent to New York in 1710 to act to provide naval stores for the British fleet along the Hudson River, and eventually moving north and west, taking land from the Native Americans before settling along the Mohawk. The ‘D’ in his name was more for adornment than anything else, and so does not stand for anything.
Owen went to school for the first time in the spring of 1881. He was six years old, and had always been inclined to books and studying. He had a teacher, Menzo McEwan, who taught him for years, and would eventually be responsible for Owen going to East Springfield, one of the few secondary schools that he could afford. Of course, it was not too close to Van Hornesville, which had few secondary education opportunities near it. This took him away from the farm, where his help was needed, but his parents supported his pursuit of education to the point of later mortgaging the farm to send him to St. Lawrence University at Canton, New York.
Following the death of his first wife in February 1937, he married Louise Powis Clark (1887–1965), a widow with three children.
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