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- Franklin D'Olier (April 28, 1877 – December 10, 1953) was an American businessman who served as the first national commander of The American Legion from 1919 to 1920. He was also the great-grandfather of actor Christopher Reeve.
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Franklin D'Olier (April 28, 1877 – December 10, 1953) was an American businessman who served as the first national commander of The American Legion from 1919 to 1920. He was also the great-grandfather of actor Christopher Reeve .
- Overview
- Background
- First national commander
- Later years
Franklin Woolman D'Olier (April 28, 1877 – December 10, 1953) was the first national commander of the American Legion and served in that capacity from 1919 to 1920. Like all of the original American Legion membership, D'Olier was a veteran of The Great War. D'Olier was also a prominent businessman and the great-grandfather of Superman actor Christo...
D'Olier was born in Burlington, New Jersey, the son of Annie Kay (née Woolman) and Irish-born William D'Olier.[2] Franklin D'Olier was the head of the yarn merchants, D'Olier & Company, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, when he was elected as the first national commander at the Minneapolis convention in 1919. A Quaker from Pennsylvania, an 1898 gradua...
D'Olier was unanimously elected as the first commander of the American Legion in 1919. At his acceptance speech he said only, "My word is simply this. We came here to work. Let us keep working and not listen to speeches. I thank you." As commander he served without pay and defrayed all of his expenses out of his own funds. The three main items on his agenda as national commander were disability benefits for wounded veterans, jobs training for unemployed veterans, and a scheme of "adjusted compensation" that would have paid veterans what they would have earned if they had not served in the war. It was alleged that the average soldier, sailor, or Marine made $1 per day during the war while the average factory worker made $12. His staunch support for the adjusted compensation lead many of his previous friends in business to become hostile towards him. He said to Marquis James, "I don't feel welcome down here any more. There are a lot of people in this neighborhood (referring to Wall Street) who used to think I was a pretty descent, respectable business man who knew the rules of the game and played by them. Now they treat me as if I belonged to the I.W.W." (A History of the American Legion" by Marquis James. Pg. 141 Wm Green. 1923.)
In September 1920 before the start of the American Legion's national convention in Cleveland, Ohio, D'Olier told a reporter, "The American Legion is the best insurance policy a country ever had."
D'Olier would return to his business in Philadelphia while still remaining active in veterans affairs until his death in 1953. In 1945, while heading Prudential Life Insurance, he was asked by President Harry Truman to chair the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey.[3] He is buried in the St. Mary's Episcopal church yard in his hometown of Burlington, New...
May 16, 2023 · Franklin Woolman D'Olier (April 28, 1877 – December 10, 1953) was the first national commander of the American Legion and served in that capacity from 1919 to 1920. D'Olier was born in Burlington, New Jersey, the son of Annie Kay (née Woolman) and Irish-born William D'Olier.
- Male
- April 28, 1876
- Helen Roberts (Kitchen) D'olier
- December 10, 1953
What real-life hero (and Legion founder) is the ancestor of a big-screen hero? Franklin D’Olier, The American Legion’s first national commander. Born in New Jersey in 1877, D’Olier graduated from Princeton University and was heading up his father’s textile operation when World War I started.
In March 1941, Past National Commander D’Olier joined National Commander Milo J. Warner, National Commander’s Aide Joseph Deutschle, and Maj. Gen. Frank Parker on a mission to survey the damage caused by the German blitz in England and learn what civilians were doing to build their country's defenses. The group met with Royal Air Force (RAF ...
Franklin D’Olier’s chief aim as national commander was the development and implementation of policies expressing the values of individual Legionnaires. His position on adjusted compensation for veterans, highly controversial at the time, evolved significantly as he listened to Legionnaires he met in his travels.
Franklin D’Olier was born April 28, 1877 in Burlington, NJ, just across the river from Philadelphia. His father, William D’Olier, emigrated from Ireland to Burlington in 1860 at the age of 16 and went on to found William D’Olier & Co., a cotton-yarn spinning firm based in Philadelphia, in 1869.
