May 1, 2008 – Robert Trowbridge Hartmann died on April 11 of cardiac arrest, in Washington, D.C. He was 91 and lived in Bethesda, Maryland and Christiansted, St. Croix, where he was a member of the St. Croix Reformed Church in the U.S. Virgin Islands. During his life, he combined the perspectives of the White House and the Congress, a prize-winning newsman and foreign correspondent, a wartime Naval officer and information specialist. He will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday, June 23 with full military honors. A memorial service will be held in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, May 31.
Born April 8, 1917 in Rapid City, South Dakota, son of the late Dr. and Mrs. Miner Louis Hartmann of Beverly Hills, California, he spent his youth in upstate New York and southern California and was graduated from Stanford University in 1938.
Having served as Vice President Gerald Ford's chief of staff, Hartmann was President Ford's first appointment when Ford became president on August 9, 1974. Appointed counselor to the president with Cabinet rank, he supervised the research, correspondence and writing staff in the White House office and personally drafted and edited most of Ford's statements and speeches. This included the 1974 address in which Ford, assuming the presidency after the resignation of Richard M. Nixon, told the nation, "our long national nightmare is over."
As one of the two Cabinet-rank counselors to serve throughout the Ford Administration, he took part in White House policy-making sessions and accompanied the president throughout the 1974 and 1976 political campaigns and on his travels to Europe, the Far East and the Soviet Union. Before leaving office, Ford named him to a three-year term on the Board of Visitors, United States Naval Academy.
In 1980 McGraw Hill published Hartmann's "Palace Politics: An Insider Account of the Ford Years." As Ford's closest personal aide from the Congress to the White House, he wrote a critical and analytical account about this nation's first unelected president including insider information on the pardon of Richard Nixon.
During World War II, he served in the Pacific on the staffs of Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz and Admiral William F. Halsey, rising from ensign to lieutenant commander, USNR. He retired in 1977 in the grade of Captain, United States Naval Reserve.
After the war, he returned to the staff of the Los Angeles Times as a reporter and in 1948 became its youngest editorial writer. As a winner of an Ogden Reid Foundation Fellowship in 1951, he covered the Middle East, based in Beirut, Lebanon.
In 1954, Hartmann was named chief of the Los Angeles Times' Washington Bureau, and during the next decade he covered Congress, the White House, the campaigns and global travels of Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy and Vice President Nixon, including the "Kitchen Debate" in Moscow with Nikita Khrushchev. He won the 1958 national Distinguished Service Award of Sigma Delta Chi, the Society of Professional Journalists, for the year's best Washington correspondence. He also won the Overseas Press Club of America's 1961 citation for the best series on Latin America and other journalistic honors. In 1963 and 1964 he established and headed his paper's Mediterranean and Middle East Bureau based in Rome, Italy. Returning to Washington as North American information chief for the international Food and Agriculture Organization, he joined the professional staff of the Republican Conference of the U.S. House of Representatives a year after Rep. Gerald R. Ford (R-Mich.) was elected minority leader.
Married for 65 years to the former Roberta Sankey, he is survived by her, one son, Robert Sankey Hartmann of Bethesda, Md.; one daughter, Roberta Brake of Louisville, Ky.; four grandchildren: Stephen Brake, Julie Barkley, Daniel Satterthwaite Hartmann and David Trowbridge Hartmann; and great-grandchildren: Josh Barkley and Kyle Kocks.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in honor of Robert T. Hartmann to St. Croix Reformed Church, RR 01 Box 6125, Kingshill, V.I. 00850
Friday, May 30 – Visitation, 6-8 p.m.
Joseph Gawler's Sons
5130 Wisconsin Avenue, NW
Wasington, D.C. 20016
202-966-6400
Saturday, May 31 – Memorial Service, 11 a.m.
Metropolitan Memorial United Methodist Church
3401 Nebraska Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20016
202-363-4900
