Roy Ash

Roy L. Ash (born 1918 in Los Angeles, California-) was the co-founder and president of Litton Industries and director of the Office of Management and Budget (February 2, 1973 - February 3, 1979) during the administrations of U.S. Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

Ash graduated from high school when he was 16. After helping his father briefly, he was employed by the Bank of America as a city cash-collection messenger. Shortly after World War II began, Ash enlisted in the Army Air Corps as a private and, after a succession of promotions, became a captain in the Air Corps, serving in the Office of Management Control. After the war ended, he went to the Harvard Business School, graduating with his MBA and as a Baker Scholar in 1947. After briefly working again with the Bank of America at its headquarters, he joined Hughes Aircraft and led its finance department.

In 1953 Ash and his partner, Tex Thornton, bought Litton Industries, a small West Coast producer of microwave tubes. By the time Ash became president of the company in 1961, Litton had completed 25 mergers and operated 48 plants in nine countries in an aggressive acquisition plan. Sales in 1961 were $245 million. By 1965, Litton had over $900 million in sales and produced 5,000 different items.

After his election as president in 1968, Richard Nixon asked Ash to create and lead the President’s Advisory Council on Executive Organization, which later became known as the Ash Commission. Among the recommendations of the Committee was the establishment of the Office of Management and Budget to encourage and help develop results-oriented leadership throughout the federal government. In November 1969, the President's Domestic Council instructed Ash to study whether all federal environmental activities should be unified in one agency. During meetings in spring 1970, Ash at first expressed a preference for a single department to oversee both environmental and natural resource management. But by April he had changed his mind; in a memorandum to the President he advocated a separate regulatory agency devoted solely to the pursuit of anti-pollution programs. The report of the Ash Commission lead to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Following Nixon's reelection in 1972, Ash was named the director of the OMB. After he left OMB he joined Addressograph-Multigraph (later AM International) in an attempt to guide the foundering duplicator company at a time when the duplication industry was shifting to photocopiers from Xerox. In 1981 Ash resigned after attempting to steer the cash-straped business into new ventures.

In 2003 Ash and his wife donated $15,000,000 to Harvard to endow the Roy and Lila Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Kennedy School of Government.

He serves as a member of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

In January 2007 Ash sold one of his two massive Virginia "hunt country" properties for $22 million. It was the highest price ever recorded for a property in Loudoun County. Known as "Llangollen," the Middleburg, Virginia 1,100-acre equestrian manor was acquired by Ash in an auction in 1989 from the estate of the late Liz Whitney Tippett, first wife of John Hay Whitney. Roy still retains ownership in another Middleburg-area hunt country estate, "Huntlands", which he tried unsuccessfully to sell in 2005 for $18.8 million. That property is situated on 550 acres, built in 1837 with major additions added in 1911, and has been the weekend retreat for senators, congressmen, diplomats and Presidents. Presidents Johnson & Kennedy visited Huntland on numerous occasions.

External links

* [http://www.ashinstitute.harvard.edu Ash Institute]
* [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/26/AR2007012600778.html Washington Post January 27, 2007 "A Thoroughbred of a Price"]