DAVID ACHESON

ACHESON--David C.,

of Washington, DC and Bass River, MA. Lawyer, former United States Attorney, Special Assistant to the Secretary of Treasury, Challenger Commission member, Smithsonian Regent and Atlantic Council board member and a president of the Council, died on August 16, 2018 at his home in Washington. He was 96 years old. David was born in Washington in 1921, the son of Dean Acheson, Truman's Secretary of State from 1949 to 1952, and Alice Stanley Acheson, a noted and prolific painter. He attended The Potomac and St. Albans Schools in Washington and graduated from Groton School, Yale University and, after World War II, Harvard Law School. During the War, he served as an officer in the U.S. Navy aboard Destroyer Escorts in the Pacific Theater, seeing action at Leyte Gulf, Lingayen Gulf, Iwo Jima and elsewhere. David's career included government service, private law practice and NATO/Atlantic Alliance related work: As a lawyer with the Atomic Energy Commission 1948-1950; with Covington & Burling 1950-1961; in the Kennedy Administration as U.S. Attorney for the District, 1961-1965; in 1965, David joined Secretary of the Treasury Fowler as Special Assistant for Enforcement, organizing a multi-national program to address opium growing in and heroin trafficking from Turkey and implementing the Warren Commission recommendations concerning the Secret Service; from 1967-1974, he was general counsel of COMSAT, and then joined Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue 1974-1980 and later Drinker, Biddle & Reath 1980-1988. In 1986, he was appointed by President Reagan to the Challenger Accident Commission where he worked closely with Commission Chairman William P. Rogers on the Commission's report. David's post-1988 career was driven by his own life experience and patriotism and devoted to NATO-Atlantic Alliance foreign and security policy matters at the Atlantic Council, where he served on the board for some 20 years and was president from 1993-1999. His years with the Council were among the most gratifying of his career, as he led the organization to address globalism and its opportunities and threats and made many friends in NATO member governments and Atlantic Alliance organizations. David was on the Washington Cathedral Chapter and President of the National Cathedral Association 1980-1983, a Smithsonian Regent 1980-1992 and chaired its executive committee 1988-1992, a Sundstrand Corporation outside director 1990-1993, and a member and past president of the Metropolitan Club of Washington. He was also a career-long member of the American Law Institute. David was a lifelong student of history, classical literature and current events, reciting poetry and prose from school and college, Shakespeare's plays read and re-read aboard ship in WWII, and liberally translating his favorite Greek and Latin texts. He had an avid interest in military history, admired greatly Marshal Mannerheim, Generals Sherman and Grant and was avocationally a scholar of the Peninsular Wars and his great hero the Iron Duke, Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington; many trips abroad had to begin or end at Apsley House, the Duke's London home. David was an enthusiastic and exceptional racquet sports player, especially squash and tennis. He played tennis anywhere and everywhere for some 75 years, favored doubles and especially family doubles characterized by no- holds-barred competition and wild shot making, sometimes brilliant, scary or both. He wholly enjoyed his family's summer house in Cape Cod on Bass River, his flower gardens there, and being with family and friends on the porch, listening to Purcell, Elgar or Handel, talking and watching the River. He was a loving and supportive family man. His wife Patricia C. Acheson, a teacher and author of books about American history and government predeceased him. He is survived by his sister, Mary Acheson Bundy, a painter, his three children - Eleanor also an attorney (Emily Hewitt), David an architect (Susan Sturges) and Peter a painter - and his five adored grandchildren John, Rosa, Dean, Sebastian and Isabel. He is much missed by each and all. A service for David Acheson will be held on Friday, November 16, 2018 at 11am at Christ Episcopal Church, Georgetown (31st and O Sts, NW), Washington, DC. In lieu of flowers, his family suggests contributions to: George Washington University "docs" house call program at: https://smhs.gwu.edu/give or donations may be mailed to GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Development and Alumni Relations, 2600 Virginia Avenue, NW, Suite 355E, Washington, DC 20037; and/or Friends of Bass River at: https://www.friendsofbass river.org/join-us/, mailed to Friends of Bass River Fund, c/o The Cape Cod Foundation, 261 White's Path, Unit 2, South Yarmouth, MA 02664.