Glenn W. Ferguson

Biographical Information

Glenn W. Ferguson, (died in 2008). "In May 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson named Mr. Ferguson ambassador to Kenya, a post he held for three years.

"Mr. Ferguson returned to the United States in 1969 and, for a year, was the chancellor of Long Island University. From 1970 to 1973, he was president of Clark University in Worcester, Mass., and from 1973 to 1978 he was president of the University of Connecticut.

"He then began a five-year term as chief executive of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the government-financed network created during the cold war that broadcast news in 21 languages to an estimated 18 million listeners a day.

"In 1983, Mr. Ferguson, who had not applied for the job, was named president of Lincoln Center. He had been recommended by several members of the board. But the primarily administrative nature of the job did not suit him, and nine months later he announced his resignation...

"Mr. Ferguson graduated from Cornell with a degree in economics in 1950. A year later, he earned a master’s degree in business administration, also from Cornell. He was a lieutenant in the Air Force during the Korean War, assigned to a psychological warfare unit. In 1957, he received a law degree from the University of Pittsburgh, but never practiced law.

"After several years as a management consultant and then as an assistant professor of international affairs at the University of Pittsburgh, Mr. Ferguson was named director of the Peace Corps in Thailand. From 1964 to 1966, he was the first director of Vista, the domestic version of the Peace Corps.

"Besides his wife of 57 years, the former Patricia Head, Mr. Ferguson is survived by two sons, Bruce, of Great Falls, Va., and Scott, of Berkeley, Calif.; a daughter, Sherry Ferguson Zoellick, of McLean, Va.; and four grandchildren."