government official politician statesman
He was born in Dayton, Ohio, in March 1888. He was the son of Harry Elstner Talbott and Katharine Houk. His father, a civil engineer and construction contractor, was also active in the paper, electric power, and banking businesses. Talbott's principal commitment was to the H. E. Talbott Company, a construction firm.
He attended The Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, and spent two years at Yale University.
Harold joined to the H. E. Talbott Company in 1910, following his studies. The younger Talbott had oversight of hydroelectric and industrial construction.
During the ensuing decade the Talbotts joined other ambitious Dayton businessmen, including Edward Deeds of National Cash Register and the inventor Charles Kettering, in investing in the automotive and aviation industries. Known as the "Dayton group, " they established the Dayton Metal Products Company, which prospered on Allied war orders. Together with Detroit automobile executives, they organized the Dayton-Wright Aeroplane Company in time to win enough government contracts to make it the nation's largest producer of military aircraft during World War I.
Talbott's experience in aviation led to his appointment in 1918 as a major in the Army Air Service with the assumption that he would be assigned to duty in France with specific responsibilities for aircraft maintenance and repair. But the war ended before he could leave the United States.
For the next few years he prospered in the family construction firm and gained wider business contacts as several of the Dayton-based companies with which he was associated were absorbed into the growing General Motors Corporation. Talbott himself moved to New York City in 1924.
Although Talbott had substantial investments in such concerns as Chrysler and Electric Auto-Lite, he remained close to the aviation industry, which by the late 1920's had begun to attract the close attention of Wall Street investors. Talbott served in 1932 as chairman of the board of North American Aviation, an expanding holding company that controlled firms in both the manufacturing and transportation sides of the industry.
His experience in the aviation business earned him appointment in early 1942 as chief of the War Production Board's Aircraft Production Division. The difficulties of rapid expansion in output led to a reorganization that soon cost Talbott his influence, and he resigned within a year.
He was involved from the start in General Dwight D. Eisenhower's campaign four years later. In December 1952, Eisenhower appointed Talbott secretary of the air force.
In what was known as a businessman's administration, Talbott was considered an able administrator and served as a vigorous partisan of the air force. Although hampered by multibillion dollar budget cuts imposed by Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson, Talbott guided the air force in its expansion, while improving it in equipment and personnel as it fully entered the supersonic era.
He won wide respect in Congress and among air force professionals for his efforts on behalf of the service. Yet ironically his career as air force secretary ended with recrimination in the summer of 1955. Although he had sold his million-dollar stock holdings in defense-related industries at the time of his appointment, Talbott was permitted to retain a partnership in P. B. Mulligan and Company, a young but increasingly profitable New York clerical efficiency and management engineering firm. On occasion, he solicited business for it.
His activity on its behalf became the subject of a lengthy investigation, the first phase of which was headed by Robert F. Kennedy, then counsel to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Although Talbott had some bipartisan support for his position that no impropriety had been intended (since the accounts he sought were from firms having no substantial direct defense contracts), senators Wayne Morse and Estes Kefauver led a vigorous attack upon him that became an embarrassment to the Republicans.
In August 1955 the president, who was reputed to regard Talbott as a close friend, readily accepted his reluctantly proffered resignation in a widely quoted "Dear Harold" letter. Talbott died while vacationing at Palm Beach, Fla. Few Americans had more lengthy and varied involvement with the organizational and financial aspects of the development of the aviation industry, especially with its role in the defense complex. It is in this context that Talbott most deserves to be remembered.
After World War II, Talbott, while retaining his extensive business interests, devoted more of his time to Republican politics. In 1940 he had chaired presidential candidate Wendell Willkie's eastern finance committee. Thereafter he became associated with Thomas E. Dewey of New York, a rising political star; and as one of the insiders who organized Dewey's presidential campaign in 1948, he headed the Republican finance committee.
On August 11, 1925, he married Margaret Thayer of Philadelphia. They had four children. In 1960 his wife (Margaret Thayer) committed suicide by jumping from the 12th story of their Fifth Avenue apartment in New York City.
He was a wealthy engineer who was involved in the construction of the Soo Locks on Lake Superior and had various railroad and paper milling interests.
She was active in the Dayton anti-suffrage league, which opposed giving women the right to vote.
She was the daughter of Marian Longstreth Morris Thayer, a survivor of the RMS Titanic Disaster, and John Thayer II, a railroad executive who perished aboard the ship.
He was the coach for the Dayton Triangles professional football team, a predecessor to today's Indianapolis Colts.
She was a deputy secretary of state in the Clinton administration.
