Mason Sears

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Sears was born on December 29, 1899 to Philip Shelton Sears, a sculptor, and Mary Cabot (Higginson) Sears.[1] He attended St. Mark's School and was graduated from Harvard College in 1922.[2][3] On December 29, 1924 he married Zilla MacDougall, the daughter of Admiral William D. MacDougall.[1][4]

He had a son, Philip Mason Sears, and two grandchildren.[2] He lived in Dedham, Massachusetts and died at the Faulkner Hospital.[2]

Sears served in the United States Navy, where he was an attaché to the United States State Department delegation in Peking, China.[3][4] Here he met Danish ambassador Henrik Kauffmann, who would become his friend and later marry Sears' sister-in-law Charlotte MacDougall.[3] Sears also served in the Navy during World War II.[3]

Sears was a Member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1935 to 1937 and the Massachusetts Senate from 1939 to 1943 and again from 1947 to 1949.[5][2] Sears was Massachusetts Republican State Chair from 1949 to 1950 and was delegate to 1948 and 1952 Republican National Conventions from Massachusetts.[1][2] He stepped down as chairman of the State Committee after his attempt to liberalize the party failed to gain traction with other party leaders.[2]

Sears worked on the United States Senate campaigns of Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., a colleague of his in the state legislature and the husband of his second cousin.[6]

He was nominated by President Dwight Eisenhower and served from 1953 to 1960 as the United States' Representative to United Nations Trusteeship Council.[1][2] In 1960, he was Ambassador and chairman of the United Nations Visiting Mission to East Africa.[2]

Sears was United States' delegate to Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie's silver jubilee in 1955. Two years later, in 1957, he accompanied then-Vice President Richard Nixon as the United States' delegate to the independence celebration of Ghana.[2] Sears also served as special Ambassador to Cameroon' independence celebration.[2]

He wrote a book, Years of High Purpose, about U.S. foreign policy towards Africa under John Foster Dulles.[1]

• W. Douglas Burden wrote of his hunting trips with Mason Sears, to Inner Mongolia and Indo-China in 1922 and 1923, after they both graduated from college. The relevant chapters are "On the Sino-Mongolian Frontier" and "Glimpses of the Jungle" in Look to the Wilderness.[7]