Mason Sears

Mason Sears
Mason Sears
	Sears in 1924
Member of the Massachusetts Senate from the 2nd Norfolk District
	In office; 1947–1949
Preceded by	James Austin Peckham
Succeeded by	Leslie Bradley Cutler
Member of the Massachusetts Senate from the Norfolk and Middlesex District
	In office; 1939–1942
Preceded by	Samuel H. Wragg
Succeeded by	James Austin Peckham
Personal details
Born	December 29, 1899; Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Died	December 13, 1973 (aged 73); Faulkner Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Political party	Republican
Spouse	Zilla MacDougall
Children	Philip Mason Sears
Alma mater	Harvard College
Occupation	Salesman; Politician;

Philip Mason Sears (born December 29, 1899 — December 13, 1973) was an American politician and diplomat who served as an ambassador, member of the Massachusetts General Court, and the Chairman of the Massachusetts Republican Party.^[1]

Personal life

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 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]

Naval career

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]

Political career

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]

Diplomatic career

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]

Popular culture

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]

References

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f "Sears, Philip Mason (1899–1973". PoliticalGraveyard.com. Lawrence Kestenbaum. Retrieved 2 December 2011.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j "MASON SEARS DEAD; EX‐U.S. AIDE AT U.N." The New York Times. December 15, 1973. Retrieved October 26, 2018.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Sears and MacDougall family papers.^{[full citation needed]}
^ ^a ^b Bo Lidegaard & W. Glyn Jones (2003). Defiant diplomacy: Henrik Kauffmann, Denmark, and the United States in World War II and the Cold War, 1939–1958. P. Lang. ISBN 9780820468198.
^ 1947–1948 Public Officers of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
^ Miller, William Johnson (1967). Henry Cabot Lodge: A Biography. Heineman.
^ Burden, W. Douglas (1956). Look to the Wilderness. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. pp. 87–143.