Background
Leo Dewey Welch was born on April 22, 1898 in Rochester, N. Y. , the son of William Frederick Dewey, a mason, and Mary Elizabeth Compton.
Leo Dewey Welch was born on April 22, 1898 in Rochester, N. Y. , the son of William Frederick Dewey, a mason, and Mary Elizabeth Compton.
He attended public schools in his native city and worked his way through the University of Rochester, graduating with a B. A. degree in 1919. He served in the United States Navy Reserve during World War I.
In 1919, Welch joined the National City Bank of New York (NCB), having entered the college training class three years before. His first foreign post was in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In 1929 he was transferred to Santiago, Chile, where he was successively manager and supervisor of the NCB branch office there. While in Chile he also served as a director of the Banco Central de Chile. In 1934, Welch returned to Buenos Aires as supervisor of NCB's River Plate branches in Argentina and Uruguay. Welch also served as a director of the Banco Central de la República de Argentina between 1936 and 1940. As director of the United States Chamber of Commerce in Argentina in 1936 and 1937, he spoke out about the way the Argentine government allegedly discriminated against American business interests when allocating foreign exchange to importers. He also served as president of the Corporación para la Promoción del Intercambio (Argentine Trade Promotion Corporation) from 1941 to 1943. In 1943 he returned to New York City as vice-president in charge of NCB's Caribbean operations. Under the new regime of General Juan Peron, he was no longer welcome in Argentina. In October 1944, Welch left the NCB to become treasurer of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey (Jersey Standard), later to become the Exxon Corporation. Welch's appointment marked a change in the role of Jersey Standard's treasurer's department. In order to prepare itself for the postwar financial environment and for new international business opportunities, the company needed a new type of treasurer, who could oversee this new area of strategic concern in addition to performing traditional responsibilities. Welch's experience placed him in a position to assess the implications for the company of the planned international economic recovery. In the fall of 1945, Welch was a member of a party of senior Jersey Standard executives sent to determine what remained of its affiliated companies' organizations in western Europe. In 1952 he served as chairman of the Committee on Latin America of the Business Council of the departments of State and Commerce. The following year Welch was elected a director of Jersey Standard, a vice-president in 1956, and executive vice-president and a member of the executive committee in 1958. In addition, in 1956 Welch revived his association with NCB, which had been renamed First National City Bank of New York, serving as director until 1968. Although Welch was a Republican, in early 1963 he was appointed by President John F. Kennedy as board chairman and chief executive officer of the new Communications Satellite Corporation (COMSAT), which was created to set up a worldwide communications satellite system. COMSAT was the first modern United States government-sponsored, private-sector, profit-making corporation. It had been established by the United States Congress the previous year. Welch was chosen for his extensive international business experience, which would be valuable in promoting COMSAT to America's allies and in complex negotiations with government agencies in Washington, D. C. , and with foreign nations. He also oversaw financial affairs of COMSAT, including its initial stock offering in June 1964, which was a great success. Nearly 200, 000 Americans invested $500 each in half of the $200 million stock issue. The other half of the stock was sold to "common carrier" corporations, including the American Telephone and Telegraph. In July 1964, Welch brought together COMSAT and eighteen telecommunications companies from other Western countries in the International Telecommunications Satellite Consortium (INTELSAT) as co-owners of a prospective global communications space network; the American corporation held 61 percent of the ownership. By the spring of 1965, another twenty-six countries had joined the consortium. In April, Welch oversaw the successful launch of INTELSAT I (Early Bird), an experimental satellite with some operational capacity. COMSAT was to achieve its objective as a result of a technological breakthrough, the high-altitude, stationary INTELSAT satellite. This satellite cost only a fraction of previous satellites and allowed COMSAT to be financially independent of the government. Using an INTELSAT III satellite, global commercial satellite communications involving sixty-four countries were first established in 1968. Welch underwent surgery for a kidney ailment in May 1965 and retired from active direction of the company at the end of November, having completed the establishment phase of the corporation. He remained on the corporation's board of directors until 1977. He also continued to be a gentleman farmer on his 900-acre cattle farm near Berryville, Va. , which he had purchased in 1963. In 1971, Welch was named chairman of the National Arbitration Panel, a position he held until 1976. Welch died in an automobile accident while vacationing near Cuernavaca, Mexico.
In Montevideo, Uruguay, during this assignment he met Veronica Purviance, a prominent socialite from Kansas City, Mo. They were married on Jan. 27, 1926, in the cathedral in Montevideo; they had one child before her death in 1970.
