Paul Cushing Child
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Paul Cushing Child (January 15, 1902 – May 12, 1994) was an American civil servant, diplomat, and artist known for being the husband of celebrity chef and author Julia Child.


Early life

Child was born in
Montclair, New Jersey Montclair () is a township in Essex County in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Situated on the cliffs of the Watchung Mountains, Montclair is a wealthy and diverse commuter town and suburb of New York City within the New York metropolitan area. ...
, on January 15, 1902, to Bertha Cushing and Charles Tripler Child. When he and his twin brother Charles were six months old, their father died and their mother relocated them with her to her family's home in
Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
. It was there that Child attended Boston Latin School. After taking an extension course at
Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
he then became a teacher in France, Italy, and the United States, instructing students in various subjects including photography, English, and French. In 1941, while at
Avon Old Farms , motto_translation = Aspiring and Persevering , address = 500 Old Farms Road , city = Avon , state = Connecticut , zipcode = 06001 , country = United St ...
School, he was a teacher and mentor to future poet John Gillespie Magee Jr. Child was a fourth degree black belt in
judo is an unarmed modern Japanese martial art, Olympic sport (since 1964), and the most prominent form of jacket wrestling competed internationally.『日本大百科全書』電子版【柔道】(CD-ROM version of Encyclopedia Nipponica, "Judo"). ...
as well as a judo instructor.''A Covert Affair'', by Jennet Conant, page 14
/ref>''Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child''. By Bob Spitz. 2012
Dearie, Chapter 6: Paul
/ref>


Government service and marriage

During
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
, Child joined the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). While stationed in Kandy, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), he met Julia McWilliams, who worked for the OSS as head of the Registry of the OSS Secretariat. They married on September 1, 1946, in Lumberville, Pennsylvania, and later moved to Washington, D.C. A lover of world cuisine, Child was known for his sophisticated palate. After he finished his work with the OSS, Child joined the
United States Foreign Service The United States Foreign Service is the primary personnel system used by the diplomatic service of the United States federal government, under the aegis of the United States Department of State. It consists of over 13,000 professionals carry ...
and introduced his wife to fine food. In 1948, the U.S. State Department assigned Child to be an exhibits officer with the
United States Information Agency The United States Information Agency (USIA), which operated from 1953 to 1999, was a United States agency devoted to " public diplomacy". In 1999, prior to the reorganization of intelligence agencies by President George W. Bush, President Bil ...
. While in Paris, his wife took up cooking and became a student at the famed Paris cooking school, Le Cordon Bleu. After five years in Paris, Child was reassigned to
Marseille Marseille ( , , ; also spelled in English as Marseilles; oc, Marselha ) is the prefecture of the French department of Bouches-du-Rhône and capital of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. Situated in the camargue region of southern Fra ...
,
Bonn The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ru ...
, and
Oslo Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population ...
. In April 1955, he was summoned from Bonn to undergo interrogation in Washington, D.C. While there, he was questioned about his political beliefs and the political beliefs of his co-workers. Specifically, he was questioned about Jane Foster, a friend of the Childs' during World War II. He was also accused of "homosexual tendencies" and told by agents that "male homosexuals often have wives and children". Feeling his privacy had been violated through the interrogation, Child's and his wife's opposition to the Senate investigations—spearheaded at that time by Senator Joseph McCarthy—was reinforced.Jennet Conant, ''A Covert Affair: Julia Child and Paul Child in the OSS'' (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), esp. 12-23 Child retired from government service in 1961.


Later years

Following his retirement, the Childs moved to
Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a College town, university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cam ...
, Massachusetts, where his wife wrote cookbooks, and he took photographs to provide illustrations for them. Child was also known as a poet who frequently wrote about his wife; his prose was later celebrated in an authorized biography of her. In ''Appetite for Life'', portions of the letters he wrote to his twin brother while the Childs lived abroad were included as an illustration of his love and admiration for his wife as well as her cooking skills and talent. Julia Child's kitchen, designed by Paul Child, was the setting for three of her television shows. It is now on display at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. Beginning with ''In Julia's Kitchen with Master Chefs,'' the Childs' home kitchen in Cambridge was fully transformed into a functional set, with TV-quality lighting, three cameras positioned to catch all angles in the room, and a massive center island with a gas stovetop on one side and an electric stovetop on the other, but leaving the rest of the Childs' appliances alone. Barbara Hansen, for the ''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the U ...
'' in 1989, highlighted an exhibition of Child's photographs and paintings at the Southern California Culinary Guild and commented that "although he has had some small exhibits, Child has received scant personal recognition. Mostly, he has remained in his wife’s shadow". Hansen highlighted a 1954 photograph as "the most arresting, perhaps," in the exhibit; the photograph features "a sensitive study of Julia in a cowl-necked blue dress holding an amber cat". Paul Child died at a nursing home in Lexington, Massachusetts, on May 12, 1994, following a long illness. His widow, Julia Child, died ten years later, on August 13, 2004. A collection of papers held at the
Schlesinger Library The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America is a research library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. According to Nancy F. Cott, the Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Director ...
includes a selection of both Paul and Julia Child's journals, notes, personal and professional correspondence, along with a selection of Paul Child's artwork (photographs, prose and poetry).


Posthumous publications

* 2017 ''France Is a Feast: The Photographic Journey of Paul and Julia Child''. Written by Alex Prud’homme, great-nephew of Child, and Katie Pratt; features 225 photographs by Child.


In popular culture

* Child was portrayed by
Stanley Tucci Stanley Tucci Jr. ( ; born November 11, 1960) is an American actor and filmmaker. Involved in acting from a young age, he made his film debut in John Huston's '' Prizzi's Honor'' (1985), and continued to play a variety of supporting roles in fil ...
in the 2009 comedy-drama film ''
Julie & Julia ''Julie & Julia'' is a 2009 American biographical comedy-drama film written and directed by Nora Ephron starring Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Stanley Tucci, and Chris Messina. The film contrasts the life of chef Julia Child in the early years of her ...
,'' which was adapted in part from Julia Child's memoir '' My Life in France''; the film included Child's interrogation in 1955. * He was portrayed by
David Hyde Pierce David Hyde Pierce (born April 3, 1959) is an American actor and director of stage, film and television. He starred as psychiatrist Dr. Niles Crane on the NBC sitcom ''Frasier'' from 1993 to 2004, and won four Primetime Emmy Awards and a Scree ...
in the 2022 television series ''
Julia Julia is usually a feminine given name. It is a Latinate feminine form of the name Julio and Julius. (For further details on etymology, see the Wiktionary entry "Julius".) The given name ''Julia'' had been in use throughout Late Antiquity (e.g ...
''.


References


Additional sources

* Conant, Jennet, ''A Covert Affair: Julia and Paul Child in the OSS'' (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), {{DEFAULTSORT:Child, Paul Cushing 1902 births 1994 deaths 20th-century American diplomats American civil servants American expatriates in France American illustrators Boston Latin School alumni Columbia College (New York) alumni People from Lexington, Massachusetts People from Montclair, New Jersey People of the Office of Strategic Services