RICHARD GREGORY, FUHS '57
Louise Phelps Shamblen, FUHS '57, sent this message:
FUHS has planned a special afternoon and evening to honor Richard Gregory (FUHS '57) and induct him into the "Wall of Fame" on October 31.
To read his nomination letter, click on "Comments" below.
posted by Connie @ 12:17 PM
1 Comments
1 Comments:
Nomination letter to FUHS:
In October 2007, the Fullerton Union High School Class of 1957 gathered in Fullerton for our 50th reunion week-end. We all marveled at how very lucky we were to grow up during that era and to have attended such a wonderful high school. Some of our most vivid memories were of the incredibly supportive faculty who inspired and influenced us in so many positive ways. Thanks to them, a good many of our classmates went on to enjoy success in diverse fields, and that is why I was shocked to see that not one 1957 Alumni was featured on the FUHS Wall of Fame. I would like to rectify that void by nominating Richard Gregory for this distinguished honor. He has excelled in his chosen career, certainly displayed good citizenship, and has supported today’s youth through his tireless efforts to better our global community.
Richard S. Gregory II, FUHS Class of 1957
From 1969, when he was recruited right out of Stanford University, to the present, Richard has been at the center of globalization through his association with the World Bank. He has been an integral part of the growing integration of economies and societies around the world as resulting from an increased flow of goods, services, capital, technology, and ideas. Richard’s personal quest was the World Bank’s mandate--to globally fight poverty, illiteracy and lack of access to basic health care.
By all rights, Richard should have stayed in Fullerton where his family roots are deep. Richard’s great grandfather, William Schulte, was one of the promoters of FUHS and was on the school board. The land surrounding and including FUHS was laid out and subdivided by his namesake grandfather, RS Gregory, mayor of Fullerton in the 1920s, and postmaster in the 1930s and 1940s. His father, R. Merrill Gregory, was President and Chairman of Fullerton Savings and Loan (later Fullerton Community Bank). Richard’s brother, Carl, is currently Chairman of FCB. And, I believe two nephews and one niece have attended FUHS.
But Richard wanted to see the world, and see the world he did! After graduating from high school in 1957, he attended Stanford University and joined the NROTC where in 1962 he received a BSEE with distinction and was commissioned as an Ensign in the US Naval Reserve. His military service saw him assigned to a WWII destroyer, home ported in Yokosuka, Japan, as part of the Asiatic Squadron. He arrived just in time for the Cuban missile crisis and his ship, the USS Collett (DD-730), was assigned to block the Russian submarine fleet from leaving Vladivostok. He was later promoted to LTJG and LT, and became the Ships Chief Engineer.
When Richard was separated from active duty in 1965, he spent time traveling in Japan, Hong Kong, Saigon, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Burma, India, Nepal, Afghanistan, and Iran en route to London and home. Seeing poverty up close through people he met including the Peace Corp volunteers, US Embassy staff/CIA, missionaries and aid workers involved with refugees was the beginning of his interest in global economic development. In 1967, he returned to Stanford to study economics in order to better understand poverty, anthropology, and education. When he received an MA in Economics, he moved across the street to the Stanford Business School to study the management of large organizations because he felt that was the way to accomplish his goals. He received his MBA in Finance in 1969.
Quite by chance, the World Bank, an independent international development agency under the UN umbrella, was recruiting for their management intern program. Richard thought it sounded interesting, so he applied and was accepted. He spent the next 38 years in various operational, management and advisory positions with an institution that, although frustrating at times, is a unique mix of highly qualified and capable people from around the world who are trying to help reduce poverty and improve the lives of the less fortunate. Less than 25% of the staff is American, so it is very much like working in a microcosm of the world itself.
In the early years, Richard worked closely with a number of WWII veterans from both sides: a former French resistance fighter, an ex US fighter pilot, a former senior member of Field Marshal Rommel’s staff, and the son of the mayor of Warsaw who, as a teenager had been a messenger for the Polish resistance during the WWII uprising and later walked to Turkey. Richard also worked with the nephew of the German count who tried to blow up Hitler. The irony in all this, according to Richard, is that of all his classmates, he was by far the worst language student!
Richard’s work load has been varied: he prepared economic reports on Israel, was a manpower economist appraising a technical education project in Pakistan, a loan officer for Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey and Cyprus, a Mission Chief for the Bank’s Third Structural Adjustment Loan to Turkey, the Program Coordinator for the Europe and the Middle East Regional Vice President, and Chief Administrative Officer for Latin America. The Turkish loans, in particular, supported the outward looking reforms that enabled the emergence of Turkey into the modern world economy. In 1997, Richard retired from full time service, but has continued to consult for the Bank on a number of strategic, policy and procedural issues, such as introducing a world wide Global Distance Learning network and reforming internal administration.
Through the years, Richard has been a contact person for Stanford students and graduate students interested in international affairs, and has helped to raise money for the University. He was involved in funding education projects in various countries to enable students to develop more employable skills. In Latin America, he facilitated a strategic shift of the Bank’s programs to fund education and the environment and they were successful in doing so in a very short time by Bank standards. In Brazil, for example, there was a big gap between primary and university education (both funded by the state) and secondary education (largely private). Only the relatively well off could afford to send their kids to private secondary school and then benefit from a free university education. The World Bank was trying to change that.
I know that, for this FUHS graduate, the journey toward global equality through his work at the World Bank has been long, but ultimately rewarding. I believe it is a real tribute to Richard’s vision, as well as his fellow visionaries, that the 1990s was the first decade in which the developing countries as a whole grew at a faster rate than the more developed countries. Clearly, Richard has contributed to this very important global effort.
I thank the committee for their consideration of this nominee.
Best regards,
Judy Rockwell Eberhardt
(Comment posted by Connie.)
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