Ellsworth F. Bunker (May 11, 1894 – September 27, 1984) was an American businessman and diplomat who served as ambassador to Argentina, Italy, India, Nepal and South Vietnam. He is perhaps best known for being a hawk on the war in Vietnam and Southeast Asia during the 1960s and 1970s. As of February 2024[update], Bunker is one of only two people to have been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom twice, and the only person to receive both awards With Distinction.
Bunker's father was one of the founders and chairman of the board of National Sugar Refining Company. His younger brother, Arthur Hugh Bunker (July 29, 1895 – May 19, 1964), was also a noted businessman, chairman of the executive committee of the War Production Board (1941–1945) during World War II, and president and then board chairman of American Metal Climax (AMAX). He was married to actress and writer Isabel Leighton.[2][4] His first cousin Dorothy Penrose Cobb was married to historian Frederick Lewis Allen.[citation needed]
Ellsworth Bunker was enrolled at Yale University in 1912 and graduated in 1916 with a major in economics and a minor in history.[1][5]
Bunker first worked in his father's company, National Sugar Refining Company,[1] eventually becoming the company's president, succeeding Horace Havemeyer Sr., in 1942. During World War II he served as chairman of the War Production Board's cane sugar advisory committee.[6] He retired as an active executive in 1951 and purchased a 600-acre dairy farm in Putney, Vermont.[7] He remained a member of the board of National Sugar until 1966.[8]
He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom with Distinction twice—the first time by John F. Kennedy in 1963 (though the ceremony took place during Lyndon B Johnson's term) and the second time by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1967. He is one of only two persons (the other being Colin Powell) who received the award twice, and the only person to receive it both times with distinction.
Personal life
Bunker married a neighbor, Harriet Allen Butler, daughter of Ellen Mudge and George Prentiss Butler, in Yonkers, New York on April 24, 1920.[19] Harriet had made friends with Bunkers' sister Katherine when the two girls attended Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut.[20] They had three children, John Birkbeck, Samuel Emmet, and Ellen Mudge.[21] She died in 1964.[22]
On January 3, 1967 he married fellow ambassador Caroline Clendening "Carol" Laise in Katmandu, Nepal.[23][24] Their marriage was the first between two American Ambassadors on active duty.[25] Later that year, Bunker was named ambassador to South Vietnam and for nearly the first six years of their marriage they only saw each other monthly, via a special government flight offered by President Johnson as enticement for Bunker to accept the post.[26] Laise died in 1991. Ambassador Laise was a friend of the first Mrs. Bunker.[27]
Bunker died on September 27, 1984, at his dairy farm in Putney, Vermont.[28][29] The funeral was attended by his good friend and neighbor former senator George Aiken and former president Richard M. Nixon. Aiken died two months later.[30]
His middle child, John Birkbeck Bunker (March 8, 1926 – May 26, 2005), a first lieutenant in World War II, died of cancer at his home in Wheatland, Wyoming at age 79.[31][32][33]
In a 1978 Doonesbury cartoon, a New York tailor fitting Phred with a very old-fashioned suit says "Ellsworth Bunker used to get everything from me".
Bunker is mentioned in Allen Ginsberg's poem "September on Jessore Road", which includes the line "Where is Ambassador Bunker today? Are his Helios machine gunning children at play?"[34]
In chapter 7 of John Irving's 1989 novel A Prayer for Owen Meany: "And whom did Ellsworth Bunker replace? Remember that? Of course you don't!"
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