Horace Rowan Gaither Jr. was an American lawyer, foundation executive, attorney and investment banker.
Background
Gaither was born on November 23, 1909 in Natchez, Mississippi, the son of Horace Rowan Gaither, a banker, and Marguerite Chamberlain. Shortly after his birth the family moved to Portland, Oregon, where the senior Gaither began his banking career. He later became a bank examiner in Kansas City, Montana, and in 1919 moved to San Francisco.
Education
Gaither was educated in the public schools of Piedmont, California. After frequently listening to his father testing Boy Scouts for merit badges, he was able to qualify as an Eagle Scout at the age of twelve. He was graduated from Piedmont High School in 1926 and, with the B. A. , from the University of California at Berkeley in 1929. In 1933, Gaither graduated from the University of California Law School, tied for first in his class.
Career
After graduating, Gaither spent three years in Washington, D. C. , working for the Farm Credit Administration. Next he joined the San Francisco law firm of Cooley, Crowley, and Supple. While practicing over the ensuing five years, he also taught law at Berkeley night school. The entry of the United States into World War II was a watershed in Gaither's professional life. After Pearl Harbor he offered a course in "war law" at Berkeley, which attracted the attention of Monroe Deutsch, dean of the undergraduate college. Upon the death of the assistant director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Radiation Laboratory in 1942, Deutsch proposed Gaither as a successor, and Gaither was shortly thereafter appointed to this position. Until 1945, although not a scientist, he participated in both the planning and operation of the laboratory. Gaither's abilities in program planning and his skill in helping others to reach a consensus, even on matters in which he was a layman, won him the respect of scientists. In 1948, Karl Compton, a trustee of the Ford Foundation, persuaded Henry Ford II to put Gaither in charge of a study group that was to prepare a program and policy for the foundation, which was then about to receive the bequests of Henry and Edsel Ford. "Problems, " in contradistinction to "needs, " was a key word, and such an approach suited Gaither's temperament. He showed great breadth of interest in social policy, assuming that science and health already were adequately financed. Social policy, based on social science and management, was the field in which the real possibilities might emerge. In September 1950 the trustees accepted Gaither's report. The Ford Foundation was to engage in solving problems of world peace, democracy, the economy, education, and the scientific study of human behavior. Gaither's work with the Ford Foundation and organized philanthropy preoccupied him for the rest of his career. In March 1951, at first on a part-time basis, Gaither accepted the post of associate director of the Ford Foundation, with primary responsibility for the Behavioral Sciences Program. Paul Hoffman, president of the foundation, wanted activists, and he got them. But almost immediately serious and systematic friction developed among the officers. Hoffman was forced to resign in February 1953. Gaither was named acting president of the foundation and given the mandate to move its headquarters from Pasadena, California, to New York City. In September he was elected president, and he quickly turned away from Hoffman's style of staffing. His officers were less in the public eye and more amenable to administrative discipline. Gaither was preeminently a generalist at a time when generalists were in particular demand. Even his abilities as an administrator were largely confined to helping others reach a consensus. His way of conducting a meeting was to let the participants talk until a consensus emerged. He rarely made decisions himself. Every stage of his career in the Ford Foundation revealed this pattern of operation. In 1954, against great opposition and in a charged atmosphere of personal rivalries, Gaither and a member of his new team, William McPeak, pushed through lump-sum grants to the Fund for the Advancement of Education and the Fund for Adult Education that were terminal in everything but their labels. Gaither, characteristically, acted as a mediator, while McPeak did the arguing and paid the personal price. The Fund for the Advancement of Education ultimately was merged into the Ford Foundation, but so was its president, Clarence Faust, who was given McPeak's job as vice-president for education. Before this occurred, though, Gaither and McPeak had invested hundreds of millions in programs to raise faculty salaries. They also set up the National Merit Scholarship Corporation and the Council on Library Resources, and put a new and permanent base under the American Council of Learned Societies' program supporting postdoctoral scholars. Gaither moved the Ford Foundation toward a more responsible set of budgeting decisions. During a period of congressional attacks on the foundation, Gaither muted much of the "static" directed at Henry Ford from Ford Motor Company executives. He kept them informed about what the foundation was doing, something Hoffman, Hutchins, and Katz had either neglected or disdained to do. It is difficult to say how much Gaither's hold on the presidency of the Ford Foundation was weakened by his frequent choice of conciliation over decisiveness. Donald K. David, vice-chairman of the board of trustees, had supported Gaither's appointment in 1953, but by 1956 he decided that Gaither's usefulness had ended. He moved his own office into the Ford Foundation, and became a de facto layer between the president and the board. A few months later Gaither was elevated to chairman of the board, and the search for a new president was initiated. In 1958, Gaither became ill. He remained a trustee but gave up the chairmanship to John J. McCloy. During his career at the Ford Foundation, Gaither continued to be concerned with scientific development and the applications of technology and the social sciences to national security. When the RAND Corporation was established at Santa Monica, California, in 1946, Gaither became a trustee, as well as secretary and general counsel. He was chairman of the board between 1948 and 1959. The ambiguous position of RAND, somewhere between the private sector, the military, and the aerospace industry, steadily brought the institution into controversy, although chiefly after Gaither's death. Gaither died in Boston. He had exerted only nominal control over Ford Foundation affairs since 1956, but without his efforts the foundation in its first decade would not have contributed to making organized philanthropy a profession.
Achievements
Connections
On July 18, 1931, Gaither married Charlotte Cameron Castle, whom he had known since high school. They had two sons.