Chester Bowles

Education and early career

Chester Bowles was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, to Charles Allen Bowles and Nellie Seaver (Harris). Theirs was an old Yankee family. His grandfather Samuel Bowles was a leading Republican spokesman as editor of the Springfield Republican. His father made a middle-class living as a salesman for the wood pulp industry. Chester's parents were arch-conservative Republicans who hated and feared big government. However, Chester's political views were shaped more by his aunt Ruth Standish Baldwin, who was a socialist, pacifist, friend of Norman Thomas, and leader in the early civil rights movements for Blacks. She inspired him to read deeply in politics, civil rights, and international affairs. Chester attended elite private schools – The Choate School (now Choate Rosemary Hall) in Wallingford, Connecticut, graduating in 1919. He matriculated at the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale University, earning a Bachelor of Science degree in 1924. Decades later he recalled the Yale years "as a period of overwork, confusion and missed opportunities....It was unfashionable in or out of college to think much about anything."