Robert Waring Stoddard

Robert Waring Stoddard
Robert W. Stoddard (left), City Manager McGrath and U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy before take-off in a helicopter at Worcester Regional Airport for inspection of areas devastated by the 1953 Worcester tornado.
Born	(1906-01-22)January 22, 1906 Trenton, New Jersey, United States
Died	December 14, 1984(1984-12-14) (aged 78) Worcester, Massachusetts, United States
Nationality	American
Occupation	Executive
Known for	President of Wyman-Gordon

Robert Waring Stoddard (1906–1984) was President of Wyman-Gordon, a major industrial enterprise, and one of the founders of the anticommunist John Birch Society.

The Stoddard family was one of the oldest and richest in Worcester, Massachusetts. Stoddard attended the Bancroft School in Worcester, then Worcester Academy, graduating in 1924. He went on to Yale University, and later said his opposition to Communism formed at that time. He had attended a Communist rally and what he heard made him opposed to communism for life. He married Helen Estabrook Stoddard in 1933.

The Stoddards owned Wyman-Gordon, a major company that manufactured forgings for the automotive, aerospace and gas turbine industries. Robert Stoddard joined Wyman-Gordon in 1929. He succeeded his father Harry G. Stoddard as president in 1955. Stoddard was opposed to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which would make racial discrimination illegal. In 1964, the company employed black workers only as janitors. Abbie Hoffman was the press officer for a group of civil-rights agitators who targeted the Worcester plant for picketing. Later, they filed petitions with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination and the U.S, Air Force. In July that year, the company agreed to change its hiring practices.

Stoddard was elected chairman of Wyman-Gordon in 1967. He retired from the company in 1972.

The Worcester Telegram and Evening Gazette were separate newspapers founded in the 19th century. T.T. Ellis bought both papers in 1920, and sold them in 1925 to Harry Stoddard, Robert's father, and George Booth, a former Telegram editor. Later, Robert Stoddard took over ownership of the two newspapers, as well as the main radio station in the city. The morning Telegram and the Evening Gazette helped Stoddard exert great influence in the city of Worcester. The conservative journals opposed labor unions, social programs, and the Democratic party.

Stoddard was chairman of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette for more than 20 years. He said that he did not want his papers to be organs of the John Birch Society, and had been criticized by fellow members of the society for not making enough use of the papers. When asked if he had ever disagreed with an editorial in one of the papers, he answered "All of them!" At times, however, Stoddard's increasingly extreme right-wing views caused friction with the editorial staff when they insisted on publishing articles of which he disapproved.