Businessman United Nations official
Maurice Pate was born on October 14, 1894 in Pender, Thurston County, Nebraska, United States. He was the son of Richard Ellsworth Pate, president of the town bank, and of Rachel M. Davis. When he was three, the family moved to Denver, Colorado, where his father bought a large furniture store and represented several eastern steel companies.
After attending Denver public schools, Maurice Pate entered Princeton University, from which he graduated in 1915 with a Bachelor of Science.
Maurice Pate spent the next few months in Hartley, Iowa, working in his uncle's bank. Dissuaded by his parents from following his impulse to join the Canadian army, Pate secured a position with Herbert Hoover's Committee for Relief in Belgium in April 1916. He went overseas and, after the United States entered the war, served in France with the Twenty-ninth Engineering Regiment. He next rejoined Hoover's commission, now the American Relief Administration, and in February 1919 took charge of a program feeding Polish children. Pate worked for this organization until it ceased operations in 1922. Fond of Poland by now and having many Polish friends, he remained there. From 1922 to 1927 he was an executive for Standard Oil of New Jersey. Next he ran his own import firm and represented several English and American banks in Warsaw.
From 1935 to 1939, Pate lived and worked in New York City as an investment banker and director of several business firms. Within a few hours after Germany's invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, he was in Washington, D. C. , volunteering to do whatever he could for Poland. With Herbert Hoover's backing he was named president of the Commission for Polish Relief. After Pearl Harbor he joined the American Red Cross as director of relief to Allied prisoners of war. Pate's administrative acumen, together with the worldwide political contacts he had built up over the years, enabled him to secure safe passage for $170 million worth of relief supplies through war zones in Europe and the Far East. Although he had intended to return to private business after the war, Pate did not hesitate to accompany Hoover when he undertook a world food survey at President Harry S. Truman's request in 1946. He was appalled by the condition of children in war-ravaged Europe. The Pate-Hoover report to Truman and a subsequent White House initiative helped spur the United Nations General Assembly to establish its International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) in December 1946.
The following month Pate was appointed UNICEF's first executive director, a post he held for the rest of his life. Under Pate's direction UNICEF grew into one of the United Nations' most successful organizations. At first UNICEF concentrated on providing short-term emergency aid, food, clothing, medicine, for the countries of central and eastern Europe. But by 1950 it had shifted its focus to the worldwide problem of chronic starvation and disease among children. In 1953 the United Nations General Assembly made UNICEF a "continuing" agency. Thereafter, UNICEF steadily increased the scope of its operations: in 1965 the agency had 551 long-term programs under way that provided benefits for more than 55 million children in 116 countries. Although UNICEF responded promptly to floods, storms, epidemics, and other emergencies, its more typical operations aimed at eradicating chronic nutritional deficiencies in children's diets throughout the developing world. It shipped millions of pounds of skim milk to these countries and established more than 130 dairies worldwide. Working closely with the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization, UNICEF also helped develop new sources of protein-rich foods: fish, cottonseed, and peanut flours, and soybean products.
During the 1950's the agency achieved notable progress in its campaign to eradicate malaria and other diseases. A quiet and self-effacing leader, yet always pragmatic, Pate was adroit at securing support from both political parties in the United States (always UNICEF's largest contributor) and from foreign governments as well. He was an excellent fund-raiser: during his tenure the number of nations pledging contributions to UNICEF rose from 35 in 1953 to 118 a decade later. Although he wrote little and spoke in public only infrequently, Pate traveled extensively on behalf of the agency. He was one of the first westerners allowed into Hungary after the October Revolution in 1956; within hours emergency relief plans for Budapest had been drawn up. Pate also personally organized relief efforts in Leopoldville during the Congo crisis of 1960. Also in 1960, Pate refused to allow his nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. The honor, he said, belonged to UNICEF, not to an individual. He died in New York City on January 19, 1965.
Maurice Pate was a selfless team player. He was characterized by his successor as UNICEF's architect and builder and as a great practical idealist.
Quotes from others about the person
"Maurice Pate is the most effective human angel I know" - Herbert Hoover.
In 1927, Maurice Pate married Jadwiga Monkowska. They were amicably divorced in 1937. On October 31, 1961, he married Martha B. Lucas, an educational administrator. Pate never had children of his own.
