beavered away. One senior staff member told her that Jim was working too hard and wondered if she could get him to slow down. She politely declined. “He’s a spinning top,” she said. “If I slow him down, he’ll fall over.”
Over the last four decades, she had found ways to be there for her husband, even in daunting circumstances; when Jim had served in the Burmese theater of World War II in the US Army, she had sent him fruitcakes with bottles of whiskey baked into the middle. After the war, when he worked in China for the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, she surprised him one day by showing up on his doorstep unannounced. A social worker for the Washington, DC, publicschool system and a Democratic Party volunteer, she continued to work in Washington during Jim’s first year at UNICEF. But she would eventually give up her career entirely to bolster his. Their three sons, John, Jamie, and Bill, were all grown when their father took the UNICEF job.
Ethel became his emissary to UNICEF staff, holding cocktail parties and dinners and formal teas. She created a welcoming committee for new hires or those new to New York and made a special effort to get to know employees’ spouses. Even those who found Jim overbearing loved Ethel; she tempered his intensity and pulled him back when he went too far. She was also a pivotal go-between: often the fastest way to get to Jim was through Ethel.
Grant did a lot of entertaining, but almost all of the work—the cooking, baking, inviting, and organizing—fell to Ethel. Celebrities, presidents, ambassadors, high-ranking UN officials—Ethel hosted them all. Her “Hostess Book” for Jim’s first few years at UNICEF is packed with the names of UN luminaries. Jim was perennially last-minute, and he would sometimes call Ethel late in the morning and tell her he had invited an ambassador over for lunch—could she throw together some soup and sandwiches? With a chuckle, Grant’s youngest son Bill recalls his mother’s reaction: “He thinks it’s so simple. You can’t just bring over these senior-level people … You can’t just make soup and a sandwich. You’ve got to set the table! You’ve got to get out the good china!”
As he built alliances and drummed up funds and rallied staff and traveled to Paris and Tokyo and Riyadh and Geneva andCairo and dozens of other places, Grant was constantly casting around for his next scheme for remaking UNICEF. This quest became more urgent as the gloom of recession closed in, growing murkier and more foreboding. He needed to find something transformative but not grandiose, something big but not too expensive, something easy to sell, with built-in PR appeal—in essence, something “doable.”
He used every opportunity to spread word of the “silent emergency.” Smoking beneath his buoyant veneer were cinders of moral outrage—never too hot or too obvious, but they were there. On February 14, 1982, he delivered a guest sermon at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. “About the seventeen million children who die each year, there is little more to be said,” Grant told the congregants, according to his prepared remarks. “Whoever they once were, whatever religion they were growing up in, whatever language they were beginning to speak, and whatever potential lives they may have held, they were simply abandoned by the world into which they were born.” He went on: “Have we not the obligation—to ourselves as well as to them—to bring an end to the needless waste of lives?” This language was likely a rhetorical alloy of Grant’s ardor and the eloquence of his communications shaman Peter Adamson. Calm and considered, with eyes that could narrow to an intense, discerning squint, he was a respected British writer and expert on international development issues. Adamson would become the architect of Grant’s messaging and one of his closest personal friends.
About a month after this speech, a
Over the last four decades, she had found ways to be there for her husband, even in daunting circumstances; when Jim had served in the Burmese theater of World War II in the US Army, she had sent him fruitcakes with bottles of whiskey baked into the middle. After the war, when he worked in China for the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, she surprised him one day by showing up on his doorstep unannounced. A social worker for the Washington, DC, publicschool system and a Democratic Party volunteer, she continued to work in Washington during Jim’s first year at UNICEF. But she would eventually give up her career entirely to bolster his. Their three sons, John, Jamie, and Bill, were all grown when their father took the UNICEF job.
Ethel became his emissary to UNICEF staff, holding cocktail parties and dinners and formal teas. She created a welcoming committee for new hires or those new to New York and made a special effort to get to know employees’ spouses. Even those who found Jim overbearing loved Ethel; she tempered his intensity and pulled him back when he went too far. She was also a pivotal go-between: often the fastest way to get to Jim was through Ethel.
Grant did a lot of entertaining, but almost all of the work—the cooking, baking, inviting, and organizing—fell to Ethel. Celebrities, presidents, ambassadors, high-ranking UN officials—Ethel hosted them all. Her “Hostess Book” for Jim’s first few years at UNICEF is packed with the names of UN luminaries. Jim was perennially last-minute, and he would sometimes call Ethel late in the morning and tell her he had invited an ambassador over for lunch—could she throw together some soup and sandwiches? With a chuckle, Grant’s youngest son Bill recalls his mother’s reaction: “He thinks it’s so simple. You can’t just bring over these senior-level people … You can’t just make soup and a sandwich. You’ve got to set the table! You’ve got to get out the good china!”
As he built alliances and drummed up funds and rallied staff and traveled to Paris and Tokyo and Riyadh and Geneva andCairo and dozens of other places, Grant was constantly casting around for his next scheme for remaking UNICEF. This quest became more urgent as the gloom of recession closed in, growing murkier and more foreboding. He needed to find something transformative but not grandiose, something big but not too expensive, something easy to sell, with built-in PR appeal—in essence, something “doable.”
He used every opportunity to spread word of the “silent emergency.” Smoking beneath his buoyant veneer were cinders of moral outrage—never too hot or too obvious, but they were there. On February 14, 1982, he delivered a guest sermon at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. “About the seventeen million children who die each year, there is little more to be said,” Grant told the congregants, according to his prepared remarks. “Whoever they once were, whatever religion they were growing up in, whatever language they were beginning to speak, and whatever potential lives they may have held, they were simply abandoned by the world into which they were born.” He went on: “Have we not the obligation—to ourselves as well as to them—to bring an end to the needless waste of lives?” This language was likely a rhetorical alloy of Grant’s ardor and the eloquence of his communications shaman Peter Adamson. Calm and considered, with eyes that could narrow to an intense, discerning squint, he was a respected British writer and expert on international development issues. Adamson would become the architect of Grant’s messaging and one of his closest personal friends.
About a month after this speech, a
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