Point Reyes Light - October 23, 2003
Marshall Plan official dies at 84
Leonard B. Tennyson, 84, director of the first European Union office in Washington DC, which evolved into a full diplomatic delegation, died Sept. 30, of pneumonia at the Tamalpais Continuing Care Facility in Greenbrae.
Born in Yonkers, New York in 1919, he attended public schools in New York City and graduated from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine in 1942. He served in the Pacific theater four years during World War II in the US Coast Guard and Naval Air Corps.
Newsman
After the war, he was a newsman in New York City for the United Press Association and later a correspondent in London for the United Press and the National Broadcasting Corporation. He was also a correspondent for the London Observer in London and Vienna.
From 1950 to 1952, he joined the Marshall Plan and worked in its missions in Vienna, Austria, and Rome. He returned to the US in 1953, resumed newspaper work briefly and later became executive assistant to W. Averell Harriman.
In June, 1954, he established and became director of the information service of the European Coal and Steel Community, the first undertaking of its kind in the US. The service was inspired by Jean Monnet, the first president of ECSC; and by George Ball, who became a top-ranking State Department official in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.
After the signing of the Rome Treaties in 1957, Tennyson became director of the European Community Information Service serving organizations that today make up the European Union.
Active in retirement
Tennyson retired from the European Union in 1974 and worked for six years as the Washington DC correspondent for the New York-based newsletter of the American Research Institute.
In his last years with the European Union and with the Research Institute he was a professorial lecturer at American University and has lectured at universities and colleges in the US and abroad.
He was an editor and author of articles and publications on European economic and political affairs.
Tennyson moved from Washington DC to Inverness in 1990, where he became active in the Inverness community. He recorded in print an extensive series of interviews that he conducted, documenting the October 1995 Mount Vision Fire that nearly destroyed the town.
This work has been placed in the archives of the Jack Mason Museum of Inverness as part of the town history.
Honors and awards
Tennyson was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs, the National Press Club, the Federal City Club, the Society for International development, and the American Political Science Association. In 1964, He was awarded in a six-month fellowship by the Ford foundation for travel and study in Europe.
Tennyson is survived by ex-wife Anne Witherspoon of Inverness, daughter Noel Tennyson Hoffmann of Stratton, VT, daughter-in-law Marilyn Howe of Pahoa, Hawaii, and daughter Leslie Tennyson of Salt Lake City, Utah. His son Jeffery Lawrence died in 1991.