Claiborne Pell

Pell enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard as a seaman second class on August 12, 1941, four months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Pell served as a ship's cook, was promoted to seaman first class on October 31, and then was commissioned as an ensign on December 17, 1941.[17] During the war, Pell's ships served as North Atlantic convoy escorts, and also in amphibious warfare during the allied invasion of Sicily and the allied invasion of the Italian mainland.[18]

Pell was promoted to lieutenant (junior grade) on October 1, 1942, and then to lieutenant in May 1943. Due to his fluency in Italian, Pell was assigned as a civil affairs officer in Sicily, where he became ill from drinking unpasteurized milk. He was sent home for recuperation during the summer of 1944, but returned to active service later in the war. Pell was discharged from active duty on September 5, 1945.[19]

After the end of World War II, he remained in the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve. He attained the rank of captain and retired in 1978.[20]

In December 1944, Pell married Nuala O'Donnell, daughter of Charles Oliver O'Donnell and Josephine Hartford.[21][22][23] They had four children: Herbert Claiborne Pell III, Christopher Thomas Hartford Pell, Nuala Dallas Pell, and Julia Lorillard Wampage Pell.[24][25] Herbert (September 11, 1945 – September 24, 1999)[26] and Julia (May 9, 1953 – April 13, 2006) predeceased their parents.[27] His grandson Clay Pell (son of Herbert) was an unsuccessful contender in the 2014 Democratic primary for Governor of Rhode Island.[28]

From 1945 to 1952, he served in the United States Department of State as a Foreign Service Officer in Czechoslovakia, Italy, and Washington, D.C. He was fluent in French, Italian, and Portuguese.[29]

In 1945, Pell was a participant in the United Nations Conference on International Organization in San Francisco that drafted the United Nations Charter.[30]

In 1946 he completed graduate studies in International Relations at Columbia University and received a Master of Arts degree.[31]

In 1954 Pell was appointed vice president and member of the board of directors of the International Fiscal Corporation. He also served as a vice president and director of the North American Newspaper Alliance.[32] He was also a director of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Foundation, Fort Ticonderoga Association, and General Rochambeau Commission of Rhode Island.[33] He also served as a fundraiser and consultant for the Democratic National Committee.[34] He served as Vice President of the International Rescue Committee. Stationed in Austria, he was responsible for assisting refugees from the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 to leave the country and resettle.[35]

During Pell's diplomatic career and other international activities in the 1940s and 1950s, he was arrested and jailed at least six times, including detentions by both fascist and communist governments.[36]

Pell was known for unusual beliefs and behaviors, including wearing threadbare suits, using public transportation and purchasing cheap used automobiles despite his wealth, and an interest in the paranormal.[42] His interest in the paranormal was critiqued by author Martin Gardner: "In my opinion, however, no one in Washington has rivaled Senator Pell in combining of science with extreme gullibility toward the performances of psychics."[43] He also wore his father's belt as a memento, despite the fact that Herbert Pell was stouter than the rail-thin Claiborne Pell, requiring Claiborne Pell to wrap the belt around his waist twice to make it fit.[44] Pell would also wear unique clothing while jogging, including a tweed suit jacket. According to another story about Pell's eccentricities, at the conclusion of a meeting with Fidel Castro, Pell took Castro's cigar because he thought it was a gift for him.[45]

In 1972's The Washington Pay-Off, author and former lobbyist Robert N. Winter-Berger wrote about Pell's alleged arrest during a raid on a Greenwich Village homosexual bar in 1964.[46] Pell denied the allegation and there were no police records, witness statements or other sources to corroborate Winter-Berger.[47][48][49] Despite legal advice to sue for defamation, Pell declined, deciding that it would draw undue publicity to the allegations.[47][48][49]

Early in his Senate tenure, Pell was a major legislative sponsor of the National Sea Grant College Program in 1965 and 1966 that served to support marine research, and develop maritime industries.[50] The Sea Grant program supported considerable growth of the oceanography and other marine science disciplines during the mid-20th Century.

Pell was largely responsible for the creation of "Basic Educational Opportunity Grants" in 1973, renamed Pell Grants in 1980, to provide financial aid funds to U.S. college students. Pell Grants initially provided for grants for prisoners, but Congress later eliminated that provision. For some years there was more money available than was applied for.[51]

He was the main sponsor of the bill that created the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities,[52] and was active as an advocate for mass transportation initiatives and domestic legislation facilitating and conforming to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.[53]

Pell served as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1987 to 1995.[54] In 1990 he was re-elected to his sixth and last term of the Senate.

In 1996, his last full year in the Senate, Pell voted against the Defense of Marriage Act, which banned the federal government from legally recognizing same-sex marriage.[55]

Pell declined to seek re-election in 1996 and retired on January 3, 1997. Pell served in the Senate for thirty-six continuous years, making him the longest-serving U.S. Senator in the history of Rhode Island.[56] He was succeeded by Jack Reed.[57]

Senator Pell authored three books, Megalopolis Unbound: The Supercity and the Transportation of Tomorrow (1966), A Challenge of the Seven Seas (1966), (co-author), and "Power and Policy: America's Role in World Affairs" (1972).[58]

Senator Pell received more than 50 honorary college degrees, including recognition from Johnson & Wales University, the University of Vermont and the University of Massachusetts.[58][63]

In 1987 Pell was among those selected for the United Nations Environment Programme's Global 500 Roll of Honour, during the first year that award was established.[64]

In 1988, Pell received the Foreign Language Advocacy Award from the Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages in recognition of his work in establishing the NEA, the NEH, and the Pell Grant Program.[65]

On October 14, 1994, President Bill Clinton presented Pell with the Presidential Citizens Medal.[66]

Rhode Island's Newport Bridge was renamed the Claiborne Pell Bridge[67] and the Pell Center of International Relations and Public Policy was established at Salve Regina University.[68] In addition, Newport's Claiborne Pell Elementary School, which opened in 2013, was named in his honor.[69]

Pell was a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor.[70] He also received the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Crown of Italy.[71]

His awards for service in the Coast Guard during the Second World War included the American Defense Service Medal, American Campaign Medal, European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal and the World War Two Victory Medal.[72]

Pell was a member of the Rhode Island Society of the Cincinnati.[73] Pell was also an honorary life member of the Rhode Island Society of Colonial Wars as well as a member of Spouting Rock Beach Association (Bailey's Beach) and the Newport Reading Room.[74]