John Gilbert Winant

Infobox Governor
name = John Gilbert Winant


order = 68th & 71st
office = Governor of New Hampshire
term_start = 1925
term_end = 1927
1935 – 1937
lieutenant =
predecessor = Fred H. Brown (1925)
Charles W. Tobey (1935)
successor = Huntley N. Spaulding (1927)
Styles Bridges (1937)
birth_date = February 23, 1889
birth_place = New York City, New York
death_date = death date and age|1947|11|3|1889|2|23
death_place =
party = Republican
spouse =
profession =
religion =

John Gilbert Winant (February 23, 1889–November 3, 1947) was an American teacher and Republican politician from Concord, New Hampshire. Born in New York City, Winant held positions in New Hampshire, national, and international politics. He was the first man to serve more than a single two-year term as Governor of New Hampshire, winning election three times.

Winant attended St. Paul's School in Concord as well as Princeton University. He was appointed an instructor in history at St. Paul's in 1913, remaining there until 1917. He was elected to the New Hampshire General Court in 1916 and enlisted in the American Expeditionary Force in 1917.

Winant returned to his position at St. Paul's in 1919 after his military service, and was elected to the New Hampshire Senate in 1920. He lost money in oil stocks in 1929, which he had profited from through the 1920s. After his terms as Governor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Winant to be the first head of the Social Security Board in 1935, a position he held until 1937. The next year, he was elected to head the International Labor Office in Geneva, Switzerland, from January 1939. In 1941 Roosevelt appointed him ambassador to Britain, and remained in that post until he resigned in March 1946.

President Harry S. Truman appointed him U.S. representative to UNESCO in 1946, although he retired to Concord shortly after to write his memoirs.

In 1947, Winant was only the second American citizen, after General Dwight Eisenhower, to be made an honorary member of the British Order of Merit. He committed suicide later that year and was buried at St. Paul's School.

Trivia

An album of radio outtakes, "Dick Clark Presents Radio's Uncensored Bloopers" (Atlantic Records 80188), features a bizarre news report on Winant's suicide. The announcer quotes Winant's physician as saying Winant "committed suicide by shooting himself in the head with a large sixty-cent-size package of Alka-Seltzer." (It is unknown whether the report or the recording of it are genuine, as many blooper records contain bits that were re-created after the fact.)

John Gilbert Winant was with Winston Churchill when he learned that Pearl Harbor was attacked

External links

* [http://www.state.nh.us/nhdhr/glikeness/winajohn.html New Hampshire Division of Historical Resources - John G. Winant]
* [http://www.ssa.gov/history/winantpro.html Social Security Pioneers - John Gilbert Winant]