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Grayson Neikirk Kefauver was born on August, 31, 1900 in Middletown, Maryland, United States, the son of Oliver Henry Kefauver, a farmer, and Lillie May (Neikirk) Kefauver. Oliver Kefauver had been married earlier to his second wife's sister Martha Ellen Neikirk. That marriage produced two sons and one daughter; he and his second wife had four sons and one daughter.
Grayson attended the Valley View School, a one-room schoolhouse in Middletown and later the Middletown High School, to which he drove by horse and buggy. He received the Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Arizona (1921), the Master of Arts degree from Leland Stanford Junior University in California (1925), and his Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Minnesota (1928). He took further graduate studies at Harvard University and the University of California.
Kefauver was an instructor at the University of Minnesota in 1926-1928 and an assistant professor in 1928-1929. He was an associate professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, during 1929-1932. In the intervals between his university studies, Kefauver served briefly as a teacher and administrator in secondary and elementary schools in Tucson, Arizona (1921 - 1922), and Fresno, California (1923 - 1926).
In 1931-1932 he was a member of the staff of the National Survey of Secondary Education conducted by the U. S. Office of Education. In 1932 Kefauver returned to Stanford as visiting professor of education, and in 1933 he was named dean of the School of Education. In the ensuing ten years he arranged and administered many changes in the educational school. The student enrollment and staff were increased, and new programs were developed. Substantial grants from foundations were secured to augment the university funds for special projects in guidance, the language arts, and social education. Joint staff appointments facilitated interdisciplinary studies and services. Projects with the public school systems of Santa Barbara and Palo Alto and with nearby Menlo Junior College brought the School of Education into closer contact with practical problems.
An abrupt change in Kefauver's career occurred in January 1943. He took a leave of absence from Stanford and moved to Washington, D. C. , where he added his energy, enthusiasm, and intelligence to the campaign to define and secure the proper world role for education after the end of World War II. He first created the Liaison Committee on International Education, which in September 1943, under his chairmanship, held an "International Education Assembly" at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. The ability of sixty-three participants from twenty-six countries to develop and agree upon a respectable report within four days can be credited partly to Kefauver's irresistible enthusiasm and partly to the fact that the members were free agents, not representing their governments or the voluntary organizations to which they belonged. The chief elements of the program they adopted were: a permanent international organization for education and cultural development, and a temporary agency to deal with immediate postwar educational problems; rebuilding of educational facilities and services in war-devastated areas; the redirection of education in the Axis countries; and long-range programs in education for world citizenship.
In March 1944, Secretary of State Cordell Hull announced that a United States delegation would attend the Conference of Allied Ministers of Education (CAME) in London on April 5. The delegation consisted of Grayson Kefauver, Archibald MacLeish of the Library of Congress, U. S. Commissioner of Education John W. Studebaker, Dean C. Mildred Thompson of Vassar College, Ralph Turner of the State Department, and, as chairman, Congressman J. William Fulbright. The delegation was authorized to work with CAME to establish a United Nations Educational and Cultural Organization and to offer American assistance in the educational reconstruction of war-torn countries. Following the mission in April, Kefauver remained in London, with the rank of minister, as the American official liaison to CAME. His chief activity was to prepare for the Constitutional Conference for the agency ultimately called UNESCO. Facing an unknown period of continued absence from the United States, Kefauver early in 1945 resigned the deanship of Stanford but remained on the faculty list as professor of education.
The Conference for the Establishment of the United Nations Educational and Cultural Organization met in London November 1-16, 1945. Kefauver was one member of a rather large United States delegation, but his previous work made him by far its best-informed member. The conference had to deal with a number of problems: what UNESCO should do about the reconstruction of educational facilities in war-devastated areas; whether UNESCO should endeavor to contribute directly to peace and security or rather make its contribution through long-range efforts to promote human welfare through education; to what extent UNESCO should be a strictly intergovernmental agency and how, if at all, nongovernmental organizations should participate in its work; how much autonomy UNESCO should claim and secure from the United Nations; whether UNESCO activities should be those of a liaison and clearing-house agency, or an action agency to promote peace, or an agency to collect and distribute knowledge. The London conference was undoubtedly the high point in Grayson Kefauver's career.
At age forty-five he should have had at least twenty more years to assist in the development of UNESCO and its program, and he certainly would have made substantial contributions to the international organization he helped to establish. He did not even live to see the ratification of the UNESCO Charter, which was approved by the Senate and signed by President Harry S. Truman in June 1946. While on a speaking tour to develop public understanding and support for the charter, Kefauver had a cerebral hemorrhage in Los Angeles on January 4, 1946, and he died almost immediately.
Kefauver achieved national recognition among his colleague at Stanford and played a crucial role as a representative to Preparatory Commission for Establishing the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) (1945). He was also noted for his books "Appraising Guidance in Secondary Schools" (1941) and "Foreign Languages and Cultures in American Education" (1942).
Grayson Kefauver's excellent mind was action-oriented. He seemed to prefer working with a committee, formal or informal, rather than spending hours in isolated contemplation or writing. He was a first-class strategist, gifted with unusual ability to anticipate the reactions of others.
Kefauver married Anna Elizabeth Skinner on December 25, 1922 at Tucson. They had three children, Betty La Verne, William Henry, and Robert Elwood.
