365 Days of Facts

Today is the birthday of Dean Rusk – born David “Dean” Rusk – on February 9, 1909. He died December 20, 1994. He was one of the longest serving US Secretaries of State.

Rusk was born in Georgia to humble beginnings but pursued a strong education.  He studied at Oxford where he witnessed the build up to World War II up close.

Dean Rusk was later quoted as saying “I was a senior in college the year that the Japanese seized Manchuria and I have the picture still etched in my mind from the newsreel of the Chinese ambassador standing before the League of Nations, pleading for help against the Japanese attack. I myself was present in the Oxford Union on that night in 1933, when they passed the motion that “this house will not fight for king and country”… So one cannot have lived through those years and not have some pretty strong feelings…that it was the failure of the governments of the world to prevent aggression that made the catastrophe of World War II inevitable.” 

He served in World War II and embarked on a lifelong career of diplomatic public service.

Secretary of State Dean Rusk

President Kennedy asked Rusk to be his Secretary of State. Rusk was involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis and was in favor of the US involvement in the Vietnam War.

He served under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson and then returned to his roots to teach at the University of Georgia School of Law.  When he left Washington, he is noted as saying “What’s done cannot be undone.”

Rusk’s son summarized his father’s legacy as Secretary of State during these tumultuous times as follows: “With this reticent, reserved, self-contained, emotionally bound-up father of mine from rural Georgia, how could the decision making have gone any differently?

His taciturn qualities, which served him so well in negotiating with the Russians, ill-prepared him for the wrenching, introspective, soul-shattering journey that a true reappraisal of Vietnam policy would have involved. Although trained for high office, he was unprepared for such a journey, for admitting that thousands of American lives, and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, might have been lost in vain.”