Thomas Bancroft Schlesinger 1922-1983

SCHLESINGER, BANCROFT, SAVEDGE

Posted By: Sharyl Ferrall
Date: 5/2/2006 at 05:54:58

Thomas Bancroft Schlesinger, 61, of Williamsburg, Va., director of news services for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, died yesterday morning of complications after suffering an aneurism in the brain.

He had been in a coma in for several weeks. Originally stricken in Charlottesville, Va., where he was hospitalized, he was taken to Williamsburg Community Hospital where he died.

Born in 1922 in Iowa City, Iowa, he was the son of Arthur M. Schlesinger, a former professor of history at Harvard, and Elizabeth (Bancroft) Schlesinger.

Mr. Schlesinger was a graduate of Belmont Hill School and Brown University but had to leave college before his graduation because of World War II. Mr. Schlesinger served as an enlisted infantryman for four years on the battlefields of France and Germany. He won five battle stars.

Though away at war, Mr. Schlesinger graduated from Brown in the Class of 1943 under a special accelerated program.

After the war, in 1946, Mr. Schlesinger joined the Spartanburg (S.C.) Herald as a reporter, later moving to the Charlotte (N.C.) News and finally the Washington Post in 1949-50, before joining the State Department in 1951. At the State Department, he was editor of a periodical, "Foreign Policy Briefs," a summary of American foreign policy written under the direction of Dean Acheson.

In 1953, Mr. Schlesinger joined Colonial Williamsburg as assistant director of project planning, a post he held until 1972 when he became director.

In 1977, he became director of news services.

His brother, historian Arthur Schlesinger of New York City, a former special assistant to President John F. Kennedy and winner of two Pulitzer prizes, in a telephone interview yesterday, said, "Tom came from a family of historians and believed in living history as expressed in the Williamsburg concept as an important means of making the past vivid for the young people of the present."

On Nov. 26, 1961, in The Globe, Mr. Schlesinger wrote of "the most expensive walk in history," in which he described "a moonlight stroll through Williamsburg which cost John D. Rockefeller Jr. $62 million, and restored the city to its 18th century glory."

He described how 35 years earlier, Mr. Rockefeller had encountered the Rev. W.A.R. Goodwin in Williamsburg which then was "a decaying city bypassed by progress." Goodwin had a "nagging dream" to restore the city, and after telling his dream to Rockefeller, the Rockefeller Foundation subsequently financed the project.

Mr. Schlesinger, his brother said, "conceived and ran the Williamsburg International Assembly, and directed the Williamsburg Forum series of lecturers." He also had been editor of the quarterly review, "Colonial Williamsburg Today."

Mr. Schlesinger also was a member of the adjunct faculty of the College of William and Mary where he lectured on politics and international relations.

"Much loved in the Williamsburg community," according to his brother, he also was a collector and fan of jazz musicians.

A friend and former fellow jazz fan in Boston recalled:

"We were both great jazz nuts. He was a great mainstream jazz enthusiast and had one of the best record libraries from the 1930s through the 1950s. One of Tom's favorite pastimes was to spend an evening playing the jazz greats with his friends."

Though Mr. Schlesinger left the Boston area many years ago, he had many close ties here and he visited often.

Besides his brother, he leaves his wife, Catherine (Savedge) Schlesinger of Williamsburg; a daughter, Susan Schlesinger of Somerville; a son, Christopher Schlesinger of Little Compton, R.I.; and two grandchildren.

His funeral service will be held in Prentis House Garden in Williamsburg at 10:30 a.m. tomorrow. After cremation, Mr. Schlesinger's ashes will be scattered in the Atlantic off Sand Ridge, Va.

-Boston Globe, September 13, 1983