Wilbur Hugh Ferry
Wilbur Hugh Ferry, an American activist, was born on born 17 December 1910, the son of Hugh Joseph Ferry, President and Chairman of the Board of the Packard Motor Company, and Fay Ferry. Ferry graduated from Dartmouth College in 1932 and landed a job teaching English and Latin at Choate Rosemary Hall. From 1933-1941, he pursued a career in journalism, though in 1936 he briefly held the position of Director of Publicity for Eastern Airlines. Between 1942-1945 Ferry held a series of positions including consultant for the International Labour Organization (1940-1944), Chief Investigator in New Hampshire for the Office of Price Administration (1942-1944), Director of Public Relations for the Congress of Industrial Organizations (1944), and member of the U. S. Strategic Bombing Survey, Southwest Pacific Area (1945). From 1945-1954, Ferry was a partner in the New York public relations firm of Earl Newsom (ENCO). The Ford Foundation used this public relations agency, and Ferry was responsible for writing speeches for Henry Ford.
In 1951, while still working for Earl Newsom, Ferry became a public relations adviser for the Ford Foundation. Ferry was also a personal friend of Robert M. Hutchins who became the president of the Fund for the Republic, a non-profit organization whose basic objectives were to research and analyze civil liberties and civil rights. Ferry became Vice President of the fund in 1954 and was responsible for its administration and public relations. He continued to work for the fund after it moved from New York City to Santa Barbara, California in 1959, when it changed its name to the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions (CSDI). Ferry published a number of essays while at CSDI, including "The Corporation and the Economy" (1959), "The Economy Under Law" (1961), "Caught in the Horn of Plenty" (1962), "What Price Peace" (1963), "Masscom as Educator" (1966), "Farewell to Integration" (1967), "Tonic and Toxic Technology" (1967), and "The Police State is Here" (1969).
On August 7, 1962, Ferry delivered a speech titled "Myths, Cliches and Stereotypes" to the Western States Democratic Conference in Seattle, Washington, where he was very critical of the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover. This led to criticism across the political divide including from Attorney General Robert Kennedy and attacks by the press across the country. However, Ferry's critical view of Hoover came to be shared among many in later years.
Ferry stayed at the CDSI until 1969, when he was sacked after an internal feud. He then created his own job, hiring himself out for $6,000 a year to ten California philanthropists. One of the ten was Carol Bernstein, whose late husband was part of the Loews Inc. communications empire. Ferry’s marriage to Jolyne Marie Gillier in 1937 ended in divorce in 1972. He married Carol Underwood Bernstein in 1973. Ferry ran Carol Underwood Bernstein’s DJB Foundation, which spent out its $18 million endowment on a variety of left-wing causes. Ferry and his second wife made grants and personal contributions through the DJB Foundation to finance "things that no one else would fund because they were too radical for conventional foundations." He died in 1995 from Parkinson's disease in Scarsdale, New York.
Criticism
In the Philanthropy Roundtable, drawing on a recent biography, an article about Ferry stated:
If you were in trouble with the law in the 1970s and 1980s, knew who Ferry was, and told him you were a political prisoner, he would provide bail. As a peace activist, Ferry also spent the 1980s on a grand tour of America’s enemies, including trips to Havana and Moscow.