David K. E. Bruce

Bruce was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to William Cabell Bruce and Louise Este (Fisher) Bruce (1864–1945). His grandfather Charles Bruce (1826-1896) was a prominent lawyer and planter in Southside Virginia who fought for the Confederate States of America, and served as a U.S. Senator from Maryland. Bruce's uncle, Charles Morrelle Bruce, became acting governor of the Arizona territory, and two other uncles became noted academics. ==Career==

State service Baltimore voters elected Bruce to represent them in the Maryland House of Delegates (1924–1926). Much later he defeated a prominent critic of his friend Harry Flood Byrd in the 1939 Democratic primary. He represented Charlotte County in the Virginia House of Delegates for two terms (1940–1942), as well as renovated the now-historic home his grandfather built, as discussed below. Interwar philanthropist and author Although Bruce's first diplomatic post, as vice-consul in Rome, was cut short in 1927 due to his wife's ill health, upon returning to the United States, Bruce lived in Washington and New York, where he dabbled on Wall Street and sat on various corporate boards. He also helped his father-in-law create the National Gallery of Art, of which he would serve as president from 1939-1945. Bruce also published Seven Pillars of the Republic in 1936, a book of biographical essays on American Presidents from George Washington to Andrew Jackson. He would expand it twice. In 1939 he expanded it to cover all presidents through Abraham Lincoln, under the revised title Revolution to Reconstruction, and in 1962 revised them as Sixteen American Presidents. He held the rank of major, and later lieutenant colonel in the Army Air Corps. After leaving the OSS at the end of World War II, and before entering the diplomatic field, in 1948–1949 David Bruce served as assistant secretary of commerce and oversaw American aid to France with the Economic Cooperation Administration which administered the Marshall Plan. Diplomatic service Bruce served as the United States Ambassador to France from 1949 to 1952, then briefly as undersecretary of state during the Truman administration (1952-1953), but came to dislike the Washington bureaucracy. During the Nixon administration, Bruce was an American envoy at the Paris peace talks between the United States and North Vietnam in 1970 and 1971. Bruce also served as the first United States emissary to the People's Republic of China from 1973 to 1974. He was the ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization from late 1974 to 1976. ==Personal life and death==

Bruce was an Episcopalian. On May 29, 1926, Bruce married Ailsa Mellon, the daughter of the banker and diplomat Andrew W. Mellon. They had one daughter, but Ailsa developed a debilitating but undiagnosable illness during David's first diplomatic posting (as vice counsel in Rome in 1926-1927), and they eventually divorced on April 20, 1945. on April 23, 1945, three days after his divorce. They met in wartime London. They had two sons and one daughter, Alexandra (called Sasha). Alexandra died under mysterious circumstances (possibly murder or suicide) in 1975 at age 29 at the Bruce family home in Virginia. Bruce purchased and restored Staunton Hill, his grandfather's former estate in Charlotte County, Virginia, which he represented in the Virginia House of Delegates during World War II, as described above, and made it his rural retreat between diplomatic postings and his Georgetown residence. He also donated funds to eleven nearby counties anonymously to build public facilities, among which was a regional public library somewhat to the east, serving Brunswick and Greensville Counties, which opened in October 25, 1940 and continues as the Brunswick Historical Society headquarters as newer buildings now serve both counties. ==Death and legacy==

Bruce died on December 5, 1977, of a heart attack at Georgetown University Medical Center. He was buried at Oak Hill Cemetery in Washington, D.C. Awards Bruce received the Distinguished Service Medal (U.S. Army) in 1945 for his work with the OSS as well as the French Legion of Honor and also became an honorary Commander of the British Empire. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, with Distinction, in 1976. Legacy The David K.E. Bruce Award was established in 2007 at the American School in London. Staunton Hill was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969 ==See also==