[1] After college, he served as a pilot in the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II and was seriously injured during the Battle of the Bulge; he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Purple Heart.
[1] In 1950, President Harry S. Truman appointed him to the advisory board of the Economic Cooperation Administration which administered aid to Europe under the Marshall Plan and then served as United States delegate to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
[1] In 1975, Governor Hugh L. Carey appointed him as commissioner of New York State Office of Parks and Recreation succeeding Robert Moses where he served until 1993.
His first marriage was on July 24, 1962, to Jane Bagley, a Carnegie-Mellon Institute graduate who was a granddaughter of R. J. Reynolds.
[6][7][8] In 1970, he tried his hand at producing the off-Broadway play The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds by Paul Zindel, which won the Pulitzer Prize for best drama.