Ward Chamberlin ’39
and ‘THE WAR’
As a public TV executive,Ward
Chamberlin ’39 helped nurture the
career of documentary filmmaker
Ken Burns.This fall, he became
one of the subjects of Burns’ latest
documentary,THE WAR.
By Debbie Kane
n the summer of 1939, two young Exeter graduates,
Nicholas Katzenbach and Ward Chamberlin, set off
for France. They spent the summer cycling through
the French countryside, bankrolling their trip with
moneys they had earned from running The Exonian. “We
were just ahead of the Tour de France,” remembers
Katzenbach.“They’d clear the roads and we’d sit and have
a beer and watch the riders go by.”
Even then, Katzenbach adds, he knew that his unassuming friend would become a leader later in life. A class
officer, president of The Exonian and a multisport athlete,
Chamberlin was, in addition to his accomplishments, “a
real person,” says Katzenbach, “respected and genuinely liked by
his classmates.”
Katzenbach’s hunch about his friend’s leadership potential
would be borne out over the course of Chamberlin’s nearly 40year career in public broadcasting. (Katzenbach would go on to a
distinguished career in government service, which culminated
with his appointment as U.S. attorney general in the Johnson
administration.) But what neither friend could foresee was that
just a few years later, they would each return to Europe under
vastly different circumstances—two of the more than 3,600
Exeter alumni, faculty and staff members who would serve during World War II.
Katzenbach joined the U.S. Army Air Force; Chamberlin,
who was blind in one eye, was unable to serve in the military.
Instead, in 1942, during his junior year at Princeton, he joined
the American Field Service (AFS), a volunteer ambulance corps
founded during the First World War. In January 1943, AFS
assigned him to the British 8th Army and sent him first to North
Africa and then to Italy.There, during the months-long battle for
I
Ineligible for military service during World
War II because he was blind in one eye,
Chamberlin volunteered for the American
Field Service’s ambulance corps. He recounts
his experiences along the Italian front—
including the battle for Mount Cassino
(opposite page, bottom), where Allied casualties climbed above 100,000—in the PBS
documentary THE WAR, directed by
his longtime friend and colleague, Ken Burns
(opposite page, top).
PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF AMERICAN FIELD SERVICE
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The Exeter Bulletin
fall 2007
control of Mount Cassino, Allied casualties rose well above
100,000, and Chamberlin was promoted to lieutenant, overseeing a platoon of 30 ambulances. AFS drivers evacuated not only
wounded British troops, but soldiers from many other nations as
well, including Polish and French resistance forces and members
of the New Zealand Corps.
Chamberlin—who was later promoted to captain and recognized for distinguished service by the British army—served with
AFS until the war’s end. His
experiences forever changed
his perspective on war and on
the soldiers who fight them.
“When you live and work
under stressful conditions with
people of different cultures,
you soon learn that we all have
the same basic hopes and feelings,” Chamberlin says.
Following the war, Chamberlin completed his studies at
Pr inceton, ear ned his law
degree from Columbia and
worked in Paris and London
under the Marshall Plan. He
also continued to pursue AFS’s
mission of building a more just
and peaceful world. In 1947,
while still in law school, he
fall 2007
The Exeter Bulletin
33
became one of the founders of the AFS
Intercultural Program, a teenage studentexchange program whose goal was to foster
greater understanding of other countries
and cultures. In its first year, the AFS Intercultural Program brought 52 European
teenagers to the United States to live with
American families and attend American
high schools—a radical departure, says
Chamberlin, from prevailing college and
post-college exchange programs. Sixty
years later, more than 11,000 young people
and teachers take part in AFS programs
every year, in more than 50 countries.
Reliving the War
Chamberlin’s experiences forever
changed his perspective on war,
and later inspired him to co-found
the AFS Intercultural Exchange
Program. Opposite page: President of The Exonian during his
student days, Chamberlin went
on to a distinguished career in
public broadcasting, serving as
president and CEO of WETA
from 1975 to 1990.
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The Exeter Bulletin
fall 2007
Chamberlin’s war experiences are among
the many moving stories told in filmmaker Ken Burns’ latest documentary, THE
WAR, which recently aired on PBS to
great acclaim. Chamberlin is one of close
to 40 veterans and ordinary citizens interviewed for the film, a seven-part series
telling the story of the war from an American point-of-view and documenting how
profoundly it changed our country. In the
third episode, which covers the Italian
campaign, Chamberlin recounts some of
his experiences serving with the soldiers
from the many countries that made up the
American-led 5th Army.
One of the reasons Chamberlin appears
in THE WAR is his longtime friendship
with Burns, which dates back to the early
1980s when Chamberlin was president of
WETA, the Washington, D.C., public television station. Burns, who had learned of
Chamberlin’s interest in American history,
approached him about funding one of his early documentaries. “He asked me,” Chamberlin
recalls, “if I would look at a rough cut of a documentary on Huey Long, the controversial
Louisiana senator. Luckily, I did so and immediately recognized that this was a really talented
man.That afternoon, I had a check written to him covering the cost of completion of that film,
and we have been great friends ever since.”
In the late 1980s, when they were working on the documentary The Civil War, Burns called
Chamberlin and asked for a meeting. Burns, who had originally intended to make a five-hour
film, explained that he had too much good material and would need between 10 and 13 hours
to do justice to the project.“My first response,” recalls Chamberlin,“was that this was impossible, that no one would watch TV for that length of time.” Burns, who was editing the film in
New York, asked Chamberlin to come take a look at what he had so far. So Chamberlin made
the trip from Washington, and “saw that he had wonderful material. I told him, ‘Go as long as
you have to.’ ”When The Civil War aired in 1990, it became the most-watched documentary of
its time.
Chamberlin’s career in public broadcasting began in the late 1960s, when Congress first created the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), appropriating a modest amount of federal funds for the purpose.When President Johnson appointed Frank Pace—former CEO of the
General Dynamics Corporation, and secretary of the army during the Korean War—CPB’s first
president, Pace asked Chamberlin, his executive assistant at General Dynamics, to serve as CPB’s
first vice president and general manager. Under their leadership,
two pillars of modern media, PBS and NPR, were created.
Chamberlin went on to leadership positions at both PBS and
WETA, where he served as president and CEO from 1975 to
1990.After a brief retirement, he returned to oversee two public
broadcasting institutions, “American Playhouse” and “American
Documentary/P.O.V.” In the late 1990s, he helped in the reorganization of Thirteen/WNET.Today, at age 86, he continues to
assist in the development and funding of television projects in
which he has a special interest, including an upcoming film,
Exiles in Hollywood, which documents the migration of leading
German filmmakers to Hollywood when Hitler came to power.
Among Chamberlin’s admirers is Rick Schubart, the BatesRussell Distinguished Faculty Professor and a past chair of
Exeter’s history department. He was first introduced to Chamberlin by Wick Sloane ’71, whose late father, James R. Sloane, was a
classmate of Chamberlin’s and an Academy trustee. Schubart
speaks with a historian’s respect for Chamberlin’s efforts to defend
PBS from attempts by congressional critics (and more recently,
the Bush administration) to limit the network’s programming.
“Ward has continued to protect the independent political integrity of PBS,” Schubart
says. “He stood up strongly to political pressure and is a hero to those who believe in
unvarnished truth in journalism.”
Schubart plans to incorporate excerpts
from THE WAR in his History 408 course,
“Issues of War and Peace in Modern Times.”
He calls Chamberlin’s account of his experiences at Mount Cassino “one of the most
compelling documentary pieces I have seen
of what it is like to confront the casualties of
war in person.”
Over the course of his career, Chamberlin has been honored with numerous awards,
including, in 1990, the Ralph Lowell Award,
public television’s highest honor. In 1976,
Exeter awarded him its John Phillips Award
for meritorious public service. Chamberlin
considers that the second prize that Exeter
gave him, the first being the education he
received here 60 years ago. “I had lived a
sheltered, well-to-do life,” he says. “Exeter
broadened my perspective.”
“Everything Ward has done echoes what
Exeter stands for,” notes Schubart. “He
embodies a commitment to goodness and
knowledge, as well as the spirit of non sibi.”
Chamberlin is more modest, and quick to
credit his good fortune.“You learn as you go
along,” he says, and then shares one of those life lessons.“I learned
not to make judgments about a person or product too early.”
Good advice from the man who discovered Ken Burns.
To learn more about Ward Chamberlin ’39 and the Ken Burns’ documentary
THE WAR, go to http://www.pbs.org/thewar/
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The Exeter Bulletin
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