James M. Gavin

“What can you do with a man like that?” President Kennedy would remark in quiet exasperation over some new maneuver by French President Charles de Gaulle. For eighteen months, General Gavin, as U.S. Ambassador to Paris, was most intimately engaged in trying to provide John Kennedy with some useful answers to the problems of doing business and meshing American interests with those of the enigmatic man who seeks the return of France’s grandeur.

As a prelude to becoming a superb fighting general and an ambassador to France, JAMES M. GAVINpicked coal and sold papers for a living in the Pennsylvania mining towns, enlisted in the between-wars regular Army, got into West Point without a high school education, learned to fly, and then helped to pioneer in the development of the airborne infantry. Now, at fifty-seven, he is chairman of the board of Arthur D. Little, Inc., one of the country‘s most versatile research corporations.