Childhood William Sloane Coffin Jr. was born into the wealthy elite of
New York City. His paternal great-grandfather William Sloane was a
Scottish immigrant and co-owner of the
W. & J. Sloane Company. His uncle was
Henry Sloane Coffin, president of
Union Theological Seminary and one of the most famous ministers in the United States. His father,
William Sloane Coffin, Sr., was an executive in the family business and president of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art. Record producer and civil rights activist
John Hammond was a cousin, and singer and musician
John P. Hammond his nephew. One of his ancestors was
Tristram Coffin, an early English settler in Massachusetts and prominent part of the whaling industry of the 1600s who bought Nantucket Island in 1659 for thirty pounds and two beaver hats. His mother, Catherine Butterfield, grew up in the Midwest, and as a young woman spent time in France during World War I providing relief to soldiers. She met her future husband there, where he was also engaged in charitable activities. Their three children grew up fluent in French by being taught by their
nanny, and attended private schools in New York. William Sr.'s father, Edmund Coffin, was a prominent lawyer,
real estate developer, and reformer who owned a property investment and management firm that renovated and rented low-income housing in New York. Upon Edmund's death in 1928, it went to his sons William and Henry, with William managing the firm. When the
Great Depression hit in 1929, William allowed tenants to stay whether or not they could pay the rent, quickly draining his own funds, and at a time when the family's substantial W. & J. Sloane stock was not paying dividends.
William Sloane Coffin, Sr. died at home on his oldest son Edmund's 11th birthday in 1933 from a
heart attack he suffered returning from work. After this, his wife Catherine decided to move the family to
Carmel, California, to make life more affordable, but was able to do this only with financial support from her brother-in-law Henry. After years spent in the most exclusive private schools in
Manhattan, the three Coffin children were educated in Carmel's public schools, where William had his first sense that there was injustice—sometimes very great—in the world. A talented musician, he became devoted to the piano and planned a career as a concert pianist. At the urging of his uncle Henry (who was still contributing to the family's finances), his mother enrolled him in
Deerfield Academy in 1938. The following year (when Edmund left for
Yale University), William moved with his mother to
Paris at the age of 15 to receive personal instruction in the piano and was taught by some of the best music teachers of the 20th century, including
Nadia Boulanger. The Coffins moved to
Geneva, Switzerland, when
World War II came to France in 1940, and then back to the U.S., where he enrolled in
Phillips Academy in
Andover, Massachusetts.
Early adulthood Having graduated from high school in 1942, William enrolled at
Yale College and studied in the
School of Music. While continuing his pursuit of the piano, he was also excited by the prospect of fighting to stop
fascism and became very focused on joining the war effort. He applied to work as a spy with the
Office of Strategic Services in 1943, but was turned down for not having sufficiently "Gallic features" to be effective. He then left school, enlisted in the
Army, and was quickly tapped to become an officer. After training, he was assigned to work as liaison to the French and Russian armies in connection with the Army's
military intelligence unit. Records indicate he was part of the
Ritchie Boys and trained extensively at Camp Ritchie, in Maryland. After the war, Coffin returned to Yale, where he became president of the
Yale Glee Club. He had been a friend of
George H. W. Bush since his youth, as they both attended Phillips Academy (1942). In Coffin's senior year, Bush brought Coffin into the university's exclusive
Skull and Bones secret society. Upon graduating in 1949, Coffin entered the
Union Theological Seminary, where he remained for a year, until the outbreak of the
Korean War reignited his interest in fighting communism. He joined the CIA as a case officer in 1950 (his brother-in-law
Franklin Lindsay had been head of the Office of Policy Coordination, the CIA's political warfare arm), spending three years in
West Germany recruiting anti-Soviet Russian refugees and training them to undermine Stalin's regime.
Ministry and political activism After leaving the CIA, Coffin enrolled at
Yale Divinity School and earned his Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1956, the same year he was ordained a
Presbyterian minister. Also that year he married
Eva Rubinstein, pianist
Arthur Rubinstein's daughter, and became chaplain at
Williams College. Soon, he accepted the position of Chaplain of Yale University, where he remained from 1958 until 1975. Gifted with a rich bass-baritone voice, he was an active member of the
Yale Russian Chorus during the late 1950s and 1960s. Coffin was dismayed when he learned in 1964 of the history of French and U.S. involvement in
South Vietnam. He felt the U.S. should have honored the French agreement to hold a national referendum in Vietnam about unification. He was an early opponent of the
Vietnam War and became famous for his antiwar activities and civil rights activism. In the early 1960s, he co-founded Clergy and Laity Concerned About Vietnam to resist President
Lyndon Johnson's escalation of the war. an organization he later led. Approached by
Sargent Shriver in 1961 to run the first training programs for the
Peace Corps, Coffin took up the task and took a temporary leave from Yale, working to develop a rigorous training program modeled on
Outward Bound and supervising the building of a training camp in
Puerto Rico. He used his pulpit as a platform for like-minded crusaders, hosting
Martin Luther King Jr., South African Archbishop
Desmond Tutu, and
Nelson Mandela, among others. Fellow Yale graduate
Garry Trudeau has immortalized Coffin (and Coffin's protege
Scotty McLennan) as "the Rev.
Scot Sloan" in the comic strip
Doonesbury. During the Vietnam War years, Coffin and his friend
Howard Zinn often spoke from the same antiwar platform. An inspiring speaker, Coffin was known for optimism and humor: "Remember, young people, even if you win the rat race, you're still a rat." By 1967, Coffin concentrated increasingly on preaching civil disobedience and supported the young men who turned in their draft cards. He was, however, uncomfortable with
draft-card burning, worried that it looked "unnecessarily hostile". Coffin was one of several persons who signed the open letter "A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority", which was printed in several newspapers in October 1967. That same month, he raised the possibility of declaring Battell Chapel at Yale a sanctuary for resisters, or possibly the site of a large demonstration of civil disobedience. School administration barred the use of the church as a sanctuary. Coffin later wrote, "I accused them of behaving more like 'true Blues than true Christians'. They squirmed but weren't about to change their minds.... I realized I was licked." On January 5, 1968, Coffin,
Benjamin Spock (the pediatrician and baby book author who was also a Phillips Academy alumnus),
Marcus Raskin, and
Mitchell Goodman (all signers of "A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority" and members of the anti-war collective
RESIST) were indicted by a federal grand jury for "conspiracy to counsel, aid and abet draft resistance". All but Raskin were convicted that June, but in 1970 an appeals court overturned the verdict. Coffin remained chaplain of Yale until December 1975. His other sermons included "It's a Sin to Build a
Nuclear Weapon", and during the
Iran hostage crisis, "And Pray for the Iranians, Too". Coffin openly and vocally supported
gay rights when many liberals still were uncomfortable with homosexuality. Some of the congregation's socially conservative members openly disagreed with his position on sexuality. He became president of
SANE/FREEZE, the nation's largest peace and justice organization. He retired with the title president emeritus in the early 1990s, then taught and lectured across the U.S. and overseas. Coffin also wrote several books. He cautioned that we are all living in "the shadow of Doomsday", and urged that people turn away from isolationism and become more globally aware. Shortly before his death, Coffin founded
Faithful Security, a coalition for people of faith committed to working for a world free of nuclear weapons. Rubinstein, his first wife and the mother of his children, was a daughter of pianist
Arthur Rubinstein. The loss of their son Alexander, at age 24, in a car accident in 1983 inspired one of Coffin's most requested sermons. Their two other children are community developer Amy Coffin and folk musician
David Coffin. Coffin was given only six months to live in early 2004 due to a weakened heart. He and his wife lived in the small town of
Strafford, Vermont, a few houses away from his brother Ned, until his death nearly two years later at age 81. ==Military awards==