Hess was born in Manhattan on April 20, 1933. As a Special Assistant in the White House Office, Hess's principal duty was to draft speeches for the President and other spokesman for the Administration—inside Government and out. Other responsibilities assumed by Hess during his tenure in the White House included: acting as an advisor to the
Republican National Committee's Committee on Programs and Progress, helping to gather materials from various governmental departments and agencies for possible inclusion in the 1960 GOP platform, preparing bi-weekly reports concerning congressional action on the budget for legislative leaders' meetings and sitting in on Republican congressional meetings about the 1959 Federal Airport Act. He also served as a fellow of Government at
Harvard University (1979–82), as U.S. Representative to the
United Nations General Assembly (1976) and the
UNESCO General Conference (1974). From 1969 to 1971, he was the National Chairman of the White House Conference on Children and Youth, and was the Deputy Assistant to the President for Urban Affairs in 1969. He worked in key consultant and adviser capacities for the
Russell Sage Foundation, the
German Marshall Fund, the
Ford Foundation and the U.S. Government. In 1977, Hess was elected as a fellow of the
National Academy of Public Administration. Hess was a member of the Senior Advisory Committee of the
Shorenstein Center for Press, Politics, and Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. and
Whatever Happened to the Washington Reporters, 1978-2012 (2012), and an autobiography,
Bit Player: My Life with Presidents and Ideas (2018) . Hess died at his home in Washington, D.C., on January 18, 2026, at the age of 92. ==References==