Background
Harvey Hollister Bundy was born on March 30, 1888 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the son of McGeorge Bundy, a lawyer, and Mary Goodhue Hollister. His family was socially prominent.
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Harvey Hollister Bundy was born on March 30, 1888 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the son of McGeorge Bundy, a lawyer, and Mary Goodhue Hollister. His family was socially prominent.
Bundy attended the Hackley School in Tarrytown, New York, and Yale University, from which he was graduated in 1909.
Bundy taught briefly at St. Mark's School in Southboro, Massachussets, and worked as a traveling companion (1910 - 1911) before entering Harvard University Law School. He received his law degree in 1914 and became a secretary to United States Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. Bundy was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1915.
Urbane, scholarly, and erudite, Bundy began a successful legal practice that was interrupted frequently by calls to government service. After less than a year as a clerk with the firm of Hale and Grinell, he joined the firm of Putnam, Putnam and Bell, where his father-in-law was a senior partner.
In 1917 Bundy served as assistant counsel for the United States Food Administration. He was secretary of the United States Sugar Equalization Board from 1919 to 1925.
After several years of private legal practice in Boston, Bundy's qualifications brought him to the attention of Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson, who was anxious to have on his staff a reliable senior officer with a solid background in finance. Stimson appointed Bundy assistant secretary of state in July 1931.
Although Bundy served less than two years, he and Stimson developed a close and lasting relationship. Bundy helped organize the Foreign Bond Holders Protective Council.
He also served as a State Department liaison with President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt during the final months of the Hoover administration. Leaving the State Department in 1933, Bundy returned to the Boston legal firm of Choate, Hall and Stewart. He had joined this firm as a partner in 1929 and remained affiliated with it throughout the remainder of his career.
In April 1941, Stimson, now secretary of war, called upon Bundy to be his special assistant. When the United States entered World War II, Stimson relied heavily on Bundy for advice on the most urgent administrative, personnel, and policy matters. He regarded him as his "closest personal assistant. "
Throughout the war Bundy traveled widely, attending conferences in Europe and touring front lines. Although his position in the War Department was never precisely defined, he exerted considerable influence through his involvement in sensitive matters and his closeness to the secretary.
An especially critical area with which Bundy was entrusted concerned liaison work between scientists and educators. With Vannevar Bush and representatives of the army and navy, Bundy set up a committee to educate the Joint Chiefs of Staff on scientific problems. Upon the recommendation of Bundy and Bush, the new-weapons section of the General Staff was made independent in 1942.
Within the War Department Bundy became a prime mover in coordinating the rapid development of scientific projects, in particular, the atom bomb. Bundy communicated with General Leslie R. Groves, director of the secret Manhattan Project, during the critical months of the weapon's development and deployment, and he briefed Stimson almost daily on the project's progress. Bundy also sat on the secretary's Interim Committee (which met to determine recommendations for the military use of atomic weapons) during the weeks prior to the explosion of the atom bombs over Japan in August 1945.
In the summer of 1945 Bundy accompanied Stimson to the Potsdam Conference, where he joined in talks with Prime Minister Winston Churchill concerning the strategic use of atomic energy. Bundy returned to private life following the war, but he remained interested in international affairs.
In January 1948, he accepted an appointment from President Harry S. Truman to serve on a task force with the former deputy director of the Office of Strategic Services, James Grafton Rogers, a close friend and colleague. They headed a study of the conduct of American foreign policy and prepared a report for the Congressional Commission on the Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government. Their study was completed in January 1949. In 1952 Bundy succeeded John Foster Dulles as chairman of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Bundy spent his final years in Boston, where he died.
Bundy earned a reputation for quiet, intelligent, and adroit administration, and he became familiar with complex economic matters.
On April 17, 1915, he married Katherine L. Putnam. They had five children; two of their sons, William Putnam and McGeorge, also had careers in government service and foreign affairs.