Preceded by Edwin B. Dooley Preceded by Edward B. Lawson Political party Republican Party Succeeded by Richard Ottinger Parents Helen Rogers Reid | Preceded by Mario Biaggi Name Ogden Reid Succeeded by Benjamin A. Gilman Succeeded by Walworth Barbour | |
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Education Yale University, Deerfield Academy People also search for Helen Rogers Reid, Ogden Mills Reid, Whitelaw Reid | ||
Ogden Rogers Reid (born June 24, 1925) is a former U.S. Ambassador to Israel and a four-term United States Representative from New York.
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Early life
Reid was born in New York, New York, the son of publishers Helen Rogers Reid (1882–1970) and Ogden Mills Reid (1882–1947), and the brother of Whitey Reid (1913–2009) and Elisabeth Reid, who died in childhood.
He is the grandson of diplomat and 1892 Republican Vice Presidential candidate Whitelaw Reid (1837–1912). His family owned the New York Herald Tribune and, before that the New York Tribune. His aunt, Jean Templeton Reid (1884–1962), was married to Sir John Hubert Ward (1870–1938), the son of William Ward, 1st Earl of Dudley. His grandmother, Elisabeth Reid (née Mills) (1857–1931), and her brother, Ogden Mills (1856–1929) were the children of Darius Ogden Mills (1825–1910).
He graduated from Deerfield Academy in 1943 and Yale University, where he was a member of Book and Snake, in 1949. He was widely known by his nickname, "Brownie."
Career
Reid enlisted as a private in the United States Army in 1943 and was discharged as a First lieutenant in 1946. He later served as a Captain in the United States Army Reserve.
From 1955 until 1958, he served as publisher of the family paper, the New York Herald Tribune. While publisher, Reid brought puzzle contests and stories from Hollywood into the paper, but did little to help the paper's finances. John Hay Whitney bought the paper shortly thereafter in August 1958. From 1956 until 1959, he was a director of the Panama Canal Company.
Ambassador to Israel
From 1959 to 1961, Reid was the United States Ambassador to Israel. In this role, he interacted with Foreign Minister Golda Meir, who expressed Israel's opposition to a proposal to revive the Palestine Conciliation Commission in an attempt to solve the Arab refugee problem. Following his return to the United States, he became a director of the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company in 1961.
United States Congress
In 1962, Reid was elected to the Eighty-eighth Congress as a Republican. He was on the liberal fringe of the GOP and faced repeated challenges in primaries.
In 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote to Rep. Reid thanking him for coming to Alabama and visiting Selma. King wrote that "Your very presence there has had an electric effect upon the voteless and beleaguered Negro citizens of this city, county, state and nation."
On March 22, 1972, he switched parties and joined the Democratic Party. Reid said that he could not support Richard Nixon for re-election and the Republican Party had "moved to the right" and was "not showing the compassion and sensitivity to meet the problems of the average American." He turned back a Republican challenge later on in 1972, and later Reid declined to seek re-election.
While in Congress, Reid sponsored 85 pieces of legislation and co-sponsored 99 pieces of legislation.
Later career
In 1974, he briefly ran for Governor of New York, dropping out of the race before the election. He later served in the administration of Democratic governor Hugh Carey as Commissioner of Environmental Conservation and was the unsuccessful Democratic nominee for the post of Westchester County Executive in 1983.
His papers are held with the Manuscripts and Archives at the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
Personal life
Reid was rumored to have had a romance with Barbara Ann Scott (1928–2012), the Canadian figure skater, but both denied the rumors stating "We are just friends and our plane trip had nothing to do with a romance."
In July 1949, Reid married Mary Louise Stewart (b. 1925), a Barnard College and Columbia University graduate who was the daughter of William Harold Stewart and Dorothy Miller. She was a granddaughter Roswell Miller (1843–1913), the former president of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad, and Mary Louise Roberts (1866–1955). Her uncle, Roswell Miller, Jr. (1894–1983) married Margaret Carnegie (1897–1990), the only daughter of Andrew Carnegie. Together, the Reids had six children:
The Reids lived at Ophil Cottage, the home in Purchase, New York that was built by his grandfather, Whitelaw Reid. He also owned Flyway, a 430‐acre estate in North Carolina near the Virginia border that was worth $600,000 in 1974. Reid was a member of the New York Athletic Club, the River Club and the Wings Club.