Cyrus Vance was the father of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.
39 Facts About Cyrus Vance
2.
Cyrus Vance was born on March 27,1917, in Clarksburg, West Virginia.
3.
Cyrus Vance was the son of John Carl Vance II and his wife Amy Roberts Vance, and had an elder brother, John Carl Vance III.
4.
Cyrus Vance's mother was Amy Roberts Cyrus Vance, who had a prominent family history in Philadelphia and was active in civic affairs.
5.
Cyrus Vance graduated from Kent School in 1935 and earned a bachelor's degree in 1939 from Yale College, where he was a member of the secret society Scroll and Key.
6.
Cyrus Vance earned three varsity letters in ice hockey at Yale.
7.
Cyrus Vance saw sea action in the Battle of Tarawa, the Battle of Saipan, the Battle of Guam, the Bougainville Campaign, and the Philippines Campaign.
8.
At the age of 29, Cyrus Vance married Grace Elsie "Gay" Sloane on February 15,1947.
9.
In 1957, Senator Lyndon B Johnson asked Vance to leave Wall Street to work for the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services, where he helped draft the National Aeronautics and Space Act, leading to the creation of NASA.
10.
In 1961, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara recruited Cyrus Vance to become General Counsel of the Department of Defense.
11.
Cyrus Vance was then made the Secretary of the Army by President John F Kennedy.
12.
Cyrus Vance was Secretary when Army units were sent to northern Mississippi in 1962 to protect James Meredith and ensure that the court-ordered integration of the University of Mississippi took place.
13.
In 1964, Cyrus Vance became the United States Deputy Secretary of Defense and now-President Johnson sent him to the Panama Canal Zone after student riots.
14.
Cyrus Vance first supported the Vietnam War but by the late 1960s changed his views and resigned from office, advising the president to withdraw US troops from South Vietnam.
15.
Cyrus Vance called the failed peace talks "one of the great tragedies in history".
16.
Cyrus Vance received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in January 1969.
17.
In May 1970, Vance was appointed to serve as a commissioner in a landmark panel known as the Knapp Commission, which was formed and assigned by New York City Mayor John V Lindsay to investigate systemic corruption in the New York Police Department.
18.
From 1974 to 1976, Cyrus Vance served as president of the New York City Bar Association.
19.
Cyrus Vance played an integral role as the administration negotiated the Panama Canal Treaties, along with peace talks in Rhodesia, Namibia and South Africa.
20.
Cyrus Vance worked closely with Israeli Ministers Moshe Dayan and Ezer Weizman to secure the Camp David Accords in 1978.
21.
Cyrus Vance pushed for detente to the Soviet Union, and clashed frequently with the more hawkish National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski.
22.
Cyrus Vance tried to advance arms limitations by working on the SALT II agreement with the Soviet Union, which he saw as the central diplomatic issue of the time, but Brzezinski lobbied for a tougher more assertive policy vis-a-vis the Soviets.
23.
Cyrus Vance argued for strong condemnation of Soviet activity in Africa and in the Third World as well as successfully lobbying for normalized relations with the People's Republic of China in 1978.
24.
Cyrus Vance negotiated the SALT II agreement directly with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, bypassing American Ambassador Malcolm Toon, who then criticized the agreement.
25.
Cyrus Vance, struggling with gout, went to Florida on Thursday, April 10,1980, for a long weekend.
26.
Deputy Secretary Warren Christopher, who attended the meeting in Cyrus Vance's place, did not inform him.
27.
Cyrus Vance's resignation was confirmed several days later, and he was replaced by Senator Edmund Muskie.
28.
Cyrus Vance continued his work as member of Zagreb 4 group.
29.
The plan was rejected, and Cyrus Vance announced his resignation as Special Envoy to the UN Secretary-General.
30.
Cyrus Vance was replaced by Norwegian Foreign Minister Thorvald Stoltenberg.
31.
Cyrus Vance was a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.
32.
In 1993, Cyrus Vance was awarded the United States Military Academy's Sylvanus Thayer Award.
33.
Cyrus Vance served on the board of directors of IBM, Pan American World Airways, Manufacturers Hanover Trust, US Steel, and The New York Times, as a trustee of the Yale Corporation, as chairman of the board of the Rockefeller Foundation, and vice chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations.
34.
Cyrus Vance suffered for several years from Alzheimer's disease, and died at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City on January 12,2002, aged 84, of pneumonia and other complications.
35.
Cyrus Vance's funeral was held at the Church of the Heavenly Rest in Manhattan.
36.
Cyrus Vance's remains were interred at the Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.
37.
Cyrus Vance received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969.
38.
In 1980, Cyrus Vance received the US Senator John Heinz Award for Greatest Public Service by an Elected or Appointed Official, an award given out annually by Jefferson Awards.
39.
In 1999, Cyrus Vance was presented the Lifetime Contributions to American Diplomacy Award by the American Foreign Service Association.