Name Willard Straight Education Cornell University | Role Investment Banker | |
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Died December 1, 1918, Paris, France Spouse Dorothy Payne Whitney (m. 1911–1918) Children Whitney Straight, Michael Whitney Straight, Beatrice Straight Grandchildren Tony Cookson, Barney Barnato Walker Similar People Dorothy Payne Whitney, Whitney Straight, Michael Whitney Straight, William Collins Whitney, Beatrice Straight | ||
Willard Dickerman Straight (January 31, 1880 – December 1, 1918) was an American investment banker, publisher, reporter, Army Reserve officer, diplomat and by marriage, a member of the Whitney family.
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Life and career
Straight was born on January 31, 1880 in Oswego, New York., the son of Henry H. Straight and his wife, nee Emma Dickerman. His father had been a faculty member at Oswego Normal School. Straight was orphaned at age ten, after the death of his father in 1886 and his mother in 1890. He attended Bordentown Military Institute in New Jersey, and in 1897 he enrolled at Cornell University and graduated in 1901 with a degree in architecture. While a student at Cornell, he joined Delta Tau Delta, edited and contributed to several publications, and helped to organize Dragon Day, an annual architecture students' event. He was also elected to the Sphinx Head Society, membership in which was reserved for the most respected men of the senior class.
After graduation, Straight was appointed to the Imperial Chinese Maritime Customs Service in Nanjing and worked as secretary to Sir Robert Hart, the Service's Inspector General. While in the Far East, he worked as a Reuters correspondent during the Russo-Japanese War, bringing him to Korea in 1904. In June 1905, he became the personal secretary of Edwin V. Morgan, the American consul general in the Kingdom of Korea and American vice-consul in Seoul, Korea. After briefly working in Havana, Cuba, he returned to China in 1906 as American Consul-General at Mukden, Manchuria. While there, he and Ms. Mary Harriman were reportedly romantically involved, but their marriage was prevented by E. H. Harriman, her father. He then went on to work for J. P. Morgan & Co. In April, 1908, Straight was involved in a diplomatic incident involving a Japanese postman's attack on a coolie working for the American consulate whom the Japanese believed to have insulted him: Straight brandished a revolver and sent the Japanese attackers to their government for punishment.
Before his engagement to Dorothy Payne Whitney, the society pages reported that Straight was engaged to marry Ethel Roosevelt.
Straight married Dorothy Payne Whitney, a member of the prominent Whitney family, at Geneva, Switzerland, in 1911, after five years of courtship. The Straights moved first to Beijing, then, having adjudged China too unsafe after the Chinese Revolution, back to the United States in 1912. In 1914, Willard Straight, his wife, and Herbert Croly began publication of The New Republic, a weekly political magazine. In 1917, they helped found Asia Magazine, a prominent academic journal on China.
Straight left J.P. Morgan in 1915 and went to work as a vice-president for American International Corporation. In that same year, Straight became involved with the Preparedness Movement and attended the July 1915 Citizens' Military Training Camp in Plattsburgh, New York. When the United States entered World War I two years later, Straight joined the United States Army; and served stateside and later France with the Adjutant General's Corps and First Army. For his service, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal and served as a major.
Willard Straight died in Paris (where he was arranging the arrival of the American mission to the Paris Peace Conference) of pneumonia, a complication of the Spanish influenza. His body was buried in the American cemetery at Suresnes, outside of Paris.
During his lifetime, he served as a trustee of Cornell and a member of the Century Association and Knickerbocker Club.
Legacy
In his life he made major donations to fund the construction of Schoellkopf Memorial Hall, and after his death his wife made a substantial donation to Cornell to build the school's first student union building, which was named in his honor.
In 1920, the Willard Straight Post of the American Legion was formed in New York, having as members Cyrus Baldridge, Walter Lippmann, John Dos Passos and other veterans of distinction who had come to doubt the efficacy of international violence as a means to idealistic ends, and sought to counter the extreme nationalism that came to characterize the Legion. The Post was active in promoting those ends through the 1930s.
Straight's papers are at Cornell University Library, Ithaca, NY. The papers are available in digital form from Cornell University: https://ecommons.library.cornell.edu/handle/1813/22047
Children
Children of Willard Dickerman Straight and his wife Dorothy Payne Whitney: