Augustin S. Hart, Jr.

Augustin S. "Gus" Hart, Jr. was a vice-chairman of the Quaker Oats Company, the man "responsible for the growth of the corporation's international business, beginning in Europe and Latin America and eventually extending to Africa, Asia, Australia and elsewhere." He was also a co-founder of the Inter-American Foundation. [1]

Profiles

According to his obituary in the Red Lodge, Montana, Carbon County News Online Hart was born August 5, 1915, at Brooklyn, New York, the son of Augustin Snow and Alice O'Connor Hart, and died on December 8, 1999.

Hart "was educated in Garden City, N.Y. schools, and graduated from Princeton University in 1937. He advanced his education at the London School of Economics, the Wharton School of Finance, and through extensive travel throughout Latin America and Europe"

"Hart, an accomplished linguist, worked for the Quaker Oats company from 1937 until his retirement as vice-chairman in 1980. Most of his time there was spent building and managing the company’s international division.

"While on Quaker business, he was in Holland when the Germans invaded that nation, partly by parachute, in 1940. During detainment, he became Assistant Naval Attaché for the American Embassy at The Hauge.

"Commissioned as a horse cavalry officer through the ROTC program at Princeton, Hart joined the 82nd Division as it was being transitioned for airborne assault in January, 1942. He left active duty in February, 1946, a highly decorated Lt. Colonel, having served on the staffs of generals Maxwell Taylor and James Gavin. He saw heavy action in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, Holland and Germany. He was among the first Allied troops in the D-Day invasion at Normandy, having taken the controls of an incapacitated glider over Ste-Mere-Eglise. Later he helped counter German offensives at both the Ardennes Forest and Elbe River as a member of General Gavin’s staff. The 82nd then became instrumental in securing the post-war occupation of Berlin."

Hart was a "former long-time director of the United States Trust Company, New York, and the Banco di Romas, Chicago ... Interested in both national and international economics, Hart served as a member of the Grace Commission, which determined how the U.S. might save hundreds of billions by eliminating government inefficiencies under the Reagan Administration.

"An early authority on Latin America, he served on the Business Advisory Council's Latin America committee from 1950-58. He was co-founder of the Inter-American Foundation, serving as its chairman from 1970-78. ...

""He served on the board of the British-North American Committee, was a member of both the Chicago (past chairman) and New York Councils on Foreign Relations, and was on the Ditchley Foundation's advisory council."

External links

• Obituary: Augustin S. "Gus" Hart, Cabon County News Online (Red Lodge, Montana), December 8, 1999.
• Eve Wadsworth, "A relative of Gus Hart '37 recalls how the problems of others 'became his own'" and Kate Criner, "The man who brought Quaker Oats to the world" The Daily Princetonian, February 1, 2000.