U.S. Senator and Ambassador

Henry Cabot Lodge was born in Nahant, Massachusetts, on July 5, 1902, a son of George Cabot Lodge and Mathilda Elizabeth Frelinghuysen Davis, and grandson of U.S. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. He graduated from the Middlesex School in 1920, and from Harvard University in 1924. He married Emily Sears on July 1, 1926.

Lodge spent nine years working as a journalist before entering politics, as a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1933. He served in that body until 1936, when he was elected to the U.S. Senate. Reelected to a second term in 1942, Lodge resigned from the Senate to join the army in 1944, and served in the European Theater during the last year of World War II. After a brief sojourn in private life, Lodge was returned to the U. S. Senate in 1946. A strong advocate for U. S. involvement in world affairs, Lodge was a crucial supporter of Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1952 bid for the Republican presidential nomination against isolationist Senator Robert Taft. Eisenhower ultimately won the nomination (and the presidency), but Lodge lost his bid for reelection to the Senate to newcomer John F. Kennedy.

To compensate Lodge for his loss to Kennedy, President Eisenhower named him Ambassador to the United Nations in 1953. During his tenure in that body, Lodge worked to foster good relations between the United Nations and the Third World, and advocated tough opposition against the Soviet Union. He left the United Nations in 1960 to be Richard Nixon's running mate in the presidential election.

Following the Nixon-Lodge loss to John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, Lodge retired to private life until being named Ambassador to South Vietnam in 1963. In this latter capacity, Lodge wanted to use the American clout with South Vietnamese citizens to get them to organize a more effective resistance to Communism, but was constantly frustrated by the inconsistent policies of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. He also signaled tacit U. S. support for the military coup that removed Diem in November of 1963. Lodge remained at the U. S. Embassy in Saigon until late-1964, and then returned for another "tour" in 1965. During his second "tour of duty," Lodge was a strong supporter of President Johnson's escalation of American military involvement in Vietnam.

After resigning as Ambassador to South Vietnam in 1967, Lodge served as Ambassador at Large (1967-1968), Ambassador to Germany (1968-1969), U.S. envoy to the Paris Peace Talks (1969), and occasional American representative to the Vatican (1969-1977). He retired to his home in Beverly, Massachusetts, in 1977, and died there on February 27, 1985; he is buried in Mount Cambridge Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Lodge was the author of two books: The Storm Has Many Eyes: A Personal Narrative (1973) and As It Was: An Inside View of Politics and Power in the '50s and '60s (1976).

See Also

World War II
Dwight D. Eisenhower
John F. Kennedy
Richard Nixon
Lyndon B. Johnson

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This page was last updated on September 06, 2018.