Thomas K. Finletter
American diplomat (1893–1980)
Thomas Knight Finletter (November 11, 1893 – April 24, 1980) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman.
Early life
Finletter was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Thomas Dickson Finletter and Helen Grill Finletter. He was the grandson of Thomas K. Finletter, for whom the Thomas K. Finletter School in Philadelphia is named.
He took his early education at The Episcopal Academy in Philadelphia and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with both Bachelor of Arts degree in 1915 and bachelor of laws in 1920. He also served as editor-in-chief of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. In 1920, he married Gretchen Blaine Damrosch, daughter of the conductor Walter Damrosch and granddaughter of Secretary of State James G. Blaine.
Career
In World War I, he served with the 312th Field Artillery advancing to the rank of captain. He was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1920 and the New York Bar in 1921.
Finletter practiced law in New York until he began his government service in 1941, as a special assistant to Secretary of State Cordell Hull on international economic affairs. In 1943, he was appointed executive director and later deputy director of the Office of Foreign Economic Coordinator (OFEC).
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Thomas K. Finletter” is american diplomat (1893–1980). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Thomas, Finletter and American, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1723653. VIAF identifies the subject as 30814539. The Library of Congress control number is n79059318. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1893, 1980, 1915 and 1920.
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This entry incorporates text from “Thomas K. Finletter” 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.