William Verity Jr.
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William Verity Jr. (Calvin William Verity, C. William Verity) (born on January 26, 1917) was a U.S. administrator and steel industrialist. He served as the Secretary of Commerce between 1987 and 1989, under President Ronald Reagan.
He was born in Middletown, Ohio and received his Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Yale University in 1939. He held an advertising job with Young and Rubican, managed the Hapsburg House Restaurant in New York City (after travelling around the world a bit), and then worked for Armco (American Rolling Mill Company), his grandfather's steel company.
When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, Armco lost a $353 million contract to build a steel mill there due to the necessary export licenses being revoked. The contract was subsequently awarded to a French Firm.
For a period of about four years (1942-1946), much of it during World War II, Verity served in the Pacific as a U.S. Navy lieutenant. Afterwards, he returned to Armco and advanced from handling personnel to director of organizational planning and development in 1957, to director of public relations in 1961, to vice president and general manager of steel in 1964, to executive vice president of Armco in 1965, and finally to chairman of Armco's board in 1971.
Between 1980 and 1981, Verity was a chairman in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and chairman of Reagan's bipartisan task force on Private Sector Initiatives (PSI) in 1981. He retired from Armco in 1982 and Ronald Reagan played a videotape tribute to him during a retirement banquet. In 1983 he was appointed to be a member of PSI's Advisory Council and from 1985 has served on PSI's Board of Advisors. He cochaired of the U.S.-U.S.S.R. Trade Economic Council between 1979 and 1984, a private sector council of American and Soviet business men. He was named Secretary of Commerce in 1987. The list of candidates for the job included Joe Rogers, the U.S. Ambassador to France, Clarence Brown, the acting Secretary of Commerce at the time, and Bruce Smart, the Commerce undersecretary in charge of trade matters, Representative James Broyhill, Representative Edwin Zschau, U.S. Labor Secretary William Brock and U.S. Trade Ambassador Clayton Yeutter. Verity served in that position until 1989. During his time at the U.S. Department of Commerce, among many other accomplished tasks, he established the Commerce Hall of Fame in 1988 which recognized good employees of the department. In 1988, he also created the Office of Space Commerce to support the National Space Council. That office was an early version of the Office of Space Commercialization, an office created for the effective commercial use of outer space.
Verity is married and has three children.
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| Preceded by: Malcolm Baldrige |
United States Secretary of Commerce October 19, 1987 – January 30, 1989 |
Succeeded by: Robert Mosbacher |
| United States Secretaries of Commerce |  |
|---|---|
| Secretaries of Commerce & Labor (1903–1913): Cortelyou | Metcalf | Straus | Nagel
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