Decorated U.S. statesman, serviceman and diplomat David Shiverick Smith '39 the Eisenhower administration's youngest top-ranking official when he became the assistant to the then-secretary of state at age 32 died April 13 in his home in West Palm Beach, Fla. He was 94.
By the end of his life, Smith had served as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs and the Council of American Ambassadors, of which he was a founding director.
Smith had illustrious careers in both the public and private sectors, holding prominent positions in the U.S. State Department, the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and several prestigious international law firms.
In 1976, then-President Gerald Ford appointed Smith U.S. Ambassador to Sweden, a position he held until Jimmy Carter won the U.S. presidency in 1977. During a period of heightened tensions between Eastern European nations and the West, Smith promoted "open doors" between the U.S. and Sweden, then a Socialist nation, according to his 2003 autobiography, "Reviewing the Years."
"The Swedes liked him a lot," William vanden Heuvel, co-founder and current chair emeritus of the Council of American Ambassadors, said. "He was a man of great integrity and decency candid, but not loud."
Smith was born in 1918 in Omaha, Neb. He described his childhood in Omaha as "serene, happy and blessedly isolationist" in his autobiography. In 1972, Smith married Mary Edson, whom he had met four years earlier in East Hampton, N.Y.
Smith, a history major, graduated magna cum laude from Dartmouth in 1939. A member of the Dartmouth Outing Club, Glee Club and Phi Beta Kappa, Smith spent much of his Dartmouth career hiking, skiing and playing tennis.
In his autobiography, Smith described his experience studying in Europe during his junior year at Dartmouth. He traveled to Germany, Italy and France and attended speeches by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. In Paris, he studied French logic, history and politics at the Sorbonne. These early, formative experiences abroad ignited Smith's interest in foreign affairs, he said in his autobiography.
After graduating from Columbia Law School in 1942, Smith enlisted in the U.S. Navy, serving four years as a lieutenant in the South Pacific during World War II. In 1944, Smith received severe shrapnel wounds in his left leg and foot when a Japanese bomber dropped an aerial torpedo on his ship, the USS Mercury, while it was stationed in Saipan.
Smith was awarded the Purple Heart for wounds received in battle, but he remembered the event more for the death of his friend, Warrant Officer Sayre, who was standing beside him at the time of the bombing.
"His sudden death moved me deeply," Smith wrote in "Reviewing the Years."
After the war, Smith returned briefly to New York, where he worked as a partner at the Wall Street law firm Whitman Breed, Abbott and Morgan. His political aspirations then led him to Washington, D.C., where he found a job as an assistant to then-U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.
As Dulles' assistant, Smith negotiated meetings with prominent international leaders, including General Francisco Franco, then-dictator of Spain. By 1953, Smith's diplomatic savvy had caught the attention of U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower, who promoted him to assistant secretary of the Air Force.
"My work was exciting," Smith later wrote of his time in the State Department. "Suddenly, my studies in history and political science at Dartmouth and the Sorbonne had relevance to what I was doing."
Throughout his life, Smith encouraged and inspired students to pursue careers in public service, establishing Columbia's International Fellows Program in 1960.
Smith served as dean of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs from 1960 until 1964, when he became a partner of Baker and McKenzie, an international law firm based in Chicago.
Although he stepped down from his official duties at Martin and Smith, a law firm he co-founded, in 1990, Smith continued to work for the firm as a consultant until his 85th birthday in 2003. In 1994, Smith accompanied an American envoy to Cuba, where he and other American ambassadors met with then-Cuban President Fidel Castro to discuss Cuban foreign policy.
"Smith had real influence through his personality and through his intelligence," vanden Heuvel said of the meeting.
During the last two decades of his life, Smith split his time between West Palm Beach, Washington, D.C., and Southampton, N.Y., where he and his wife owned a summer home. Smith was an avid tennis player, sailor and patron of the arts.
Smith is survived by his wife, three sons and six grandchildren, according to the Palm Beach Daily News. Smith's family was unavailable for comment by press time.
Smith's family has not yet decided on a date for his memorial, according to Quattlebaum Funeral Home, which handled Smith's arrangements.
