David K. E. Bruce

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David Kirkpatrick Este Bruce (February 12, 1898 - December 5, 1977) was the United States Ambassador to France from 1949 to 1952, United States Ambassador to West Germany from 1957 to 1959, and United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1961 to 1969. He 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 and as ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization from 1975 to 1976.

On May 29, 1926, Bruce married Ailsa Mellon, the daughter of the banker and diplomat Andrew W. Mellon. They divorced on April 20, 1945. Their daughter, Audrey, and her husband, Stephen Currier, died in a plane crash in 1967.

Bruce married Evangeline Bell on 23 April 1945. They had two sons and one daughter.

Bruce wrote a book of biographical essays on the American presidents originally published as Seven Pillars of the Republic (1936). He later expanded it as Revolution to Reconstruction (1939) and again revised it as Sixteen American Presidents (1962).

Bruce purchased and restored Staunton Hill, his family's former estate in Charlotte County, Virginia. During World War II, he served with the Office of Strategic Services and observed the invasion of Normandy. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1976.

[edit] References

Lankford, Nelson D. The Last American Aristocrat: The Biography of David K. E. Bruce, 1898–1977 (1996).
Lanford, Nelson D., ed. OSS against the Reich: The World War II Diaries of Colonel David K. E. Bruce (1991).