Adolph W. Schmidt
American diplomat (1904–2000)
Adolph William Schmidt (September 13, 1904 – December 17, 2000) was a prominent Pittsburgh philanthropist who served as United States Ambassador to Canada from 1969 to 1974.
Early life
Adolph W. Schmidt was born in 1904 and raised in McKeesport, Pennsylvania. He was educated at Princeton University and Harvard Business School. He met his future wife, Helen "Patsy" Mellon (great-granddaughter of Thomas Mellon, founder of the Mellon Bank), during a fox hunt at the Rolling Rock Club in the Ligonier Valley. The two married in 1936.
Career
Military service
Schmidt joined the military following the outbreak of World War II. He served in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) as an intelligence officer during the war, obtaining the rank of Lieutenant colonel. For a part of his service he served abroad in Africa, while his wife Helen was in Washington, D.C. working for the United States Navy.
Philanthropy and urban development
After the war, Schmidt became president of the A. W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, serving in that role from 1946 to 1969. In this capacity, he played a major role in "Renaissance I", the urban renewal of Pittsburgh. He was also heavily involved in the creation of the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health.
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This entry incorporates text from “Adolph W. Schmidt” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.