If Frank Shakespeare Jr., who died on Dec. 14 at age 97, had not so long outlived most of his contemporaries, far more encomiums would be flowing for this onetime conservative luminary, ambassador, and apostle of freedom.
Shakespeare, who in the private sector served in major executive roles at CBS, RKO, and Westinghouse, did yeoman’s work as head of the U.S. Information Agency under President Richard Nixon and as President Ronald Reagan’s chairman of the Board for International Broadcasting, overseeing Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe, spreading freedom’s truth to those enslaved by Communism. He also served as the board chairman of the conservative Heritage Foundation and later as this nation’s second-ever official ambassador to the Vatican, where he facilitated Reagan’s famous alliance with Pope John Paul II to dismantle the Soviet empire.
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VOA WENT FROM EXPOSING THE FAILURES OF COMMUNISM TO GLORIFYING ITS DICTATORS
Shakespeare was a man of integrity. Retrospective congressional testimony from 1974 about a 1971 Middle East flap is instructive. When appeasers tried to pressure the Voice of America to scrub from its news accounts the conclusive evidence that the Soviets were helping Egypt move surface-to-air missiles to the Suez Canal in violation of a ceasefire agreement, VOA director Kenneth Giddens insisted on reporting the truth. Against pressure even from Secretary of State William Rogers, Shakespeare backed Giddens to the hilt and reminded Rogers that the USIA reports directly to the president, not to the bureaucrats at Foggy Bottom.
Giddens and Shakespeare were longtime friends, and Giddens’s daughter, Winkie Greer, spent time with Shakespeare and his wife and daughter on numerous occasions over a half-century. She first met Shakespeare as a young woman when she was traveling with her parents to a CBS affiliate board meeting in Puerto Rico in 1963. The conference was interrupted by news that President John F. Kennedy had been killed. On a trip to Pearl Harbor, when Shakespeare and Giddens headed the USIA and VOA, respectively, the families were together at an event hosted by Adm. John McCain, Jr., who amazed Greer with how he kept a remarkably stiff upper lip, despite his son being held captive in North Vietnam.
According to Greer, Nixon later offered to appoint Shakespeare, a former Naval officer, as secretary of the Navy. Shakespeare declined, only to return to public service under Reagan.
Greer remembers Shakespeare as a devout patriot who relied on brilliance and steadfastness, rather than sharp elbows, to get things done.
“Bill Buckley [of National Review fame] was one of Frank’s best friends,” she said. “And Frank spoke in full paragraphs like Buckley did. Frank was so smart, and he was thoughtful. He was so pleasant: He was an 18th Century gentleman. He had a sparkle about him. He would bring depth to all of those high-level meetings.”
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In a statement this week, Heritage Foundation Founder Ed Feulner and Board of Trustees Chairman Barb Van Andel-Gaby said that Shakespeare’s “contributions … led to transformational change across the globe. … He had a front-row seat to the USSR’s downfall and played an important role to bring about the end of the Cold War.”
A longtime board member of the conservative Bradley Foundation, a World War II veteran, and a Knight of Malta in the Catholic Church, Shakespeare was described in a private email chain as “the finest role model, friend, mentor, and moral force one could imagine.” As a fitting epigraph for a great American, that’s almost pure poetry.
