Born 17 Jan 1915 in 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., White House, Washington, D.C.

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Died 3 Oct 2008 in Martha's Vineyard

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Francis Bowes Sayre, Jr. was the Dean of the Washington Cathedral for 27 years, from 1951 to his retirement in 1978. He was also the grandson of President Woodrow Wilson.

Francis was born 17 January 1915 at the White House in Washington, D.C. He was the son of Francis Sayre Sr. and Jessie Wilson. Francis was the last child born at the White House.^[1]

He married Harriet Taft Hart 18 June 1946 in Sharon, Connecticut.^[2] They were the parents of four children.

He was educated at Williams College (AB 1937, honorary DD 1963) and the Episcopal Theological Seminary, Cambridge, Mass. (BD 1940). He was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1940. He served as Chaplain of the U.S. Naval Reserve from 1942 - 1946. He was Rector of Saint Paul's Church, East Cleveland, Ohio, 1946-1951. He was Dean of the Washington Cathedral from 1951 until 1978.

He passed away 3 October 2008 at Martha's Vineyard. ^[3]

Obituary from the Washington Post:^[4]

Outspoken Dean of National Cathedral

Mr. Sayre shepherded the completion of the National Cathedral and was one of its most controversial voices.

By Adam Bernstein Washington Post Staff Writer

Francis B. Sayre Jr., who as dean of Washington National Cathedral for 27 years oversaw much of its completion and used his pulpit to confront McCarthyism, racial tensions and the Vietnam War, died Oct. 3 at his home on Martha's Vineyard, Mass. He was 93 and had diabetes.

Sayre, whose grandfather was President Woodrow Wilson, was appointed to the cathedral in 1951 and quickly became a leading national voice of conscience. As the church's fifth dean, he also presided over daily operations and focused on finishing the massive Gothic structure whose cornerstone had been placed in 1907.

Washington National Cathedral is now the sixth-largest cathedral in the world and is often regarded as America's counterpart to England's Westminster Abbey as a national center for mourning and celebration. Attracting thousands of followers, Sayre continued the cathedral's tradition of preaching the social gospel, which applies Christian ethics to matters such as war, race relations and economic inequality.

"Whoever is appointed the dean of the cathedral," he told The Washington Post in 1977, "has in his hand a marvelous instrument and he's a coward if he doesn't use it."

From the pulpit, he denounced the tactics of Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy at the Wisconsin senator's peak of influence investigating Communist influence in government and Hollywood. He called McCarthy part of a crew of "pretended patriots" and also chided the American people for letting demagogues achieve prominence.

"There is a devilish indecision about any society that will permit an impostor like McCarthy to caper out front while the main army stands idly by," he said in a 1954 sermon.

His criticism of politicians extended to presidential candidates, and he once likened Lyndon B. Johnson's ethical foundations to a termite-ridden house. He did not spare other preachers, reproaching evangelist Billy Graham for overemphasizing personal spiritual renewal and not sufficiently addressing the need for social reform.

"The salvation of the world doesn't come about by arithmetic," he said, referring to the mass gatherings hosted by Graham. "There is a dimension to sin that goes beyond the individual."

Sayre spoke out on the injustice of school segregation in 1953, a year before the U.S. Supreme Court declared racially segregated public schools unlawful. He went on to champion home rule in the District in the early 1960s, saying the matter was less about race than maintaining the self-interest of an "oligarchy" led by businessmen who create "apathy and indifference to real social and civic concerns" by denying citizens a vote.

He was later elected to President John F. Kennedy's Committee on Equal Opportunity and was among a group of several leading Washington-area clergymen to accompany the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on his 1965 voting rights march in Selma, Ala.

He spent a decade campaigning for King to speak at the cathedral before prevailing. King gave what became his last Sunday sermon -- a speech favoring civil rights and world peace -- before being assassinated in Memphis in April 1968.

During subsequent years, he opened the cathedral to often-raucous youth religious Masses and antiwar protests. He allowed conductor Leonard Bernstein to lead a free "counter-inaugural" concert in January 1973 against the reelected President Richard M. Nixon. If Sayre was generally seen as a friend of progressives, he was at least temporarily abandoned by many of them when his 1972 Palm Sunday sermon about the "moral tragedy of mankind" sharply criticized Israel for "oppressing" Arab residents of Jerusalem.

Sayre's career addressing social challenges was not a lonely crusade. He found support for his causes from many pulpits across the country. His prominence and eloquence made him one of the church's leading figures of the period, said James D. Anderson, a retired Episcopal priest who worked at the cathedral from the late 1960s to the late 1980s.

Sayre's legacy was also in the building itself. Although not officially completed until 1990, the cathedral's bell tower and nave were finished on his watch. So were a majority of the stained-glass windows, including one containing a moon rock from the Apollo 11 mission.

Trying to rush the construction for the bicentennial celebrations, however, left the church in heavy debt.

Francis Bowes Sayre Jr. was born Jan. 17, 1915, in the White House. He was the fourth grandchild of President Wilson and the first-born of Wilson's daughter Jessie, who died in 1933.

His father, a Harvard University law professor, became an assistant secretary of state in the 1930s and was U.S. high commissioner to the Philippines during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

The younger Sayre had grown up around the world and graduated from Williams College in 1937 and what is now the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass. He served in the Navy Chaplain Corps during World War II, and afterward oversaw a parish in an industrial part of Cleveland before assuming duties at the National Cathedral at age 36.

His wife, Harriet Hart Sayre, whom he married in 1946, died in 2003. Survivors include four children, Jessie Sayre Maeck of Lexington, Mass., Thomas H. Sayre of Raleigh, N.C., Harriet Sayre-McCord of Durham, N.C., and F. Nevin Sayre of Vineyard Haven, Mass.; and eight grandchildren.

Obituary From Martha's Vineyard Times: ^[5]

Francis B. Sayre Jr.

The Very Reverend Francis B. Sayre, Jr., died Friday, October 3, 2008 at his home in Vineyard Haven. From 1951 to 1978, Rev. Sayre was Dean of Washington National Cathedral. During that time he spoke out against Sen. Joseph McCarthy, marched with Martin Luther King in Selma, Alabama, and led protests against the Vietnam War.

Francis B. Sayre Jr. was born in the White House in 1915 to Francis B. Sayre Sr. and President Woodrow Wilson's daughter Jessie Wilson Sayre. He was raised in Cambridge, France, and Thailand. After graduating from Williams College, Sayre attended Union Theological Seminary and the Episcopal Divinity School. Before coming to Washington, Rev. Sayre served as Chaplain aboard the U.S.S. San Francisco during World War II, then as Industrial Chaplain for the Diocese of Ohio and as Rector of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in East Cleveland, Ohio. As Dean of the National Cathedral, Rev. Sayre oversaw the iconography, funding, and construction of the Cathedral building, which had been begun in 1907 and was completed in 1990.

President Eisenhower appointed Rev. Sayre as U.S. liaison to the United Nations World Refugee Year, and President Kennedy named him to the first Equal Opportunity Commission. Rev. Sayre was also Chairman of the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Commission, a member of the Board of Governors of the National Space Institute, and a Trustee of Howard University. He received honorary degrees from many colleges and universities including Lehigh University, Queens University Belfast, Northern Ireland, Virginia Seminary, and Williams College. Rev. Sayre and his wife Harriet Hart Sayre, who died in 2003, are survived by their daughters Jessie Sayre Maeck and Harriet Sayre-McCord, their sons Thomas Hart Sayre and Francis Nevin Sayre, by the spouses of their children, and by eight grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held at Grace Church on Saturday, Oct. 11, at 10 am. A funeral service will be held at Washington Cathedral on Saturday, Oct. 25, at 1 pm., followed by internment in the Cathedral.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to the Washington National Cathedral, or to Grace Church, Vineyard Haven, MA 02568.

MARRIAGE ANNOUNCEMENT: New York Times, June 8, 1946, p. 38-L. WILSON'S GRANDSON WEDS HARRIET HART

Rev. Francis Bowes Sayre Jr. Marries Senator's Daughter in Sharon, Conn., Church SON OF PHILIPPINE EX-AIDE

Bride Escorted by Her Father, Retired Admiral, Who Once Headed the Asiatic Fleet

Special to the New York Times.

SHARON, Conn., June 8 -- Christ Episcopal Church was the setting for the marriage here this afternoon of Miss Harriet Taft Hart, daughter of Admiral Thomas C. Hart, USN, retired, and Mrs. Hart of this place, to the Rev. Francis Bowes Sayre Jr., of Cleveland, formerly of Cambridge, Mass., son of Francis B. Sayre of Washington, D. C., and the late Mrs. Jessie Woodrow Wilson Sayre, daughter of the late President Wilson. The ceremony was performed by the Rev. Dr. Henry Sloane Coffin, who was assisted by the Rev. Francis J. M. Cotter, rector of the church.

The bride, given in marriage by her father, who is United States Senator from Connecticut, wore her mother's wedding gown of old ivory satin, princess style, with sleeves and bertha of rosepoint lace and a square train and a tulle veil edged with resepoint, which had been worn by her grandmother, attached to a rosepoint coronet. She carried a shower bouquet of lilies of the valley. Lieut. (j. g.) Caroline B. Hart of the Waves, a sister of the bride, was maid of honor. She was gowned in green and white striped chintz with a fitted bodice and full skirt, wore a large white hat with green streamers and carried Shasta daisies.

Four Other Attendants

The other attendants were Mrs. Gordon B. M. Walker of Pelham Manor, N. Y., and the Misses Eleanor Sayre, a sister of the bridegroom of Cambridge; Mary Congdon of Duluth, Minn., and Anne Hutchison of West Hartford, Conn. They were attired like the maid of honor and carried the same flowers.

Woodrow Wilson Sayre, brother of the bridegroom, was best man. Ushers were Clarence Allen of Brookline, Mass.; the Rev. C. Leslie Glenn and Capt. Joseph R. Scott of Washington; Roswell R. Hart of Sharon, brother of the bride; the Very Rev. Robert Hatch of Wilmington, Del., and the Rev. William A. Spurriel of Waban, Mass.

A reception was given at the home of the bride's parents.

Mrs. Sayre was graduated from the Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, N. Y., and in 1944 from Vassar College, and served with the Office of Strategic Services in Washington. Her father commanded the Pacific Fleet submarine forces in the first World War and became a rear admiral in 1929. He served also as superintendent of the Naval Academy at Annapolis and, from 1939 to 1942, Asiatic Fleet. After his retirement he was recalled to service as a member of the General Board of the Navy.

Entered Service in 1942

The bridegroom, who was born in the White House, was graduated from Williams College and in 1940 from the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge. He was assistant minister of Christ Episcopal Church there until he entered the service in 1942, served as a lieutenant in the Chaplains Corps, USNR, aboard the U.S.S. San Francisco and at the Navy Receiving Station in Washington, and subsequently was Staff Chaplain to the Commander, Philippine Sea Frontier.

His father, a former Professor of Law at Harvard University and director of its Institute of Criminal Law, was diplomatic adviser to the Siamese Government, and in 1933 was appointed Assistant Secretary of State by the late President Roosevelt, serving until 1939. He was High Commissioner to the Philippines, escaped by submarine from Corregidor in February, 1942, and later served as diplomatic advisor to UNRRA.

The couple will reside in Cleveland.

Sources

1. ↑ Where Eleventh White House Baby Was Born Sunday; Proud Father And Mother, Mr. And Mrs. Grand Rapids Press, Monday, Jan 18, 1915 Grand Rapids, MI, Page: 2.
2. ↑ MARRIAGE ANNOUNCEMENT: New York Times, June 8, 1946, p. 38-L.
3. ↑ "United States Social Security Death Index," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:JGPB-T6F : 20 May 2014), Francis B Sayre, 03 Oct 2008; citing U.S. Social Security Administration, Death Master File, database (Alexandria, Virginia: National Technical Information Service, ongoing).
4. ↑ Obituary, Washington Post, tuesday October 7, 2008, page B01.
5. ↑ Martha's Vineyard Times (mvtimes.com), Published: October 9, 2008.

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