Lewis Metcalf WALLING

1908 - 1997  (88 years)

• Name	Lewis Metcalf WALLING  [1]
  Birth	22 Dec 1908  [2]
  Gender	Male
  Death	21 Jan 1997  [2]
  Notes	Ancestry.com: Sun-Sentinel (Ft. Lauderdale, Florida) Obituaries, 1993-99 - L. Metcalf Walling, a New Dealer to whom fell the thorny task of administering and enforcing novel concepts such a the minimum wage in wartime, died on Tuesday at the Gifford Elder Care center in Randolph, Vermont. He was 88 and had lived in Randolph Center, Vt., after a second career overseas. Mr. Walling was a close aide to Labor Secretary Frances Perkins, whose opponents despised her liberal inclinations as much as they resented her presence as the first woman in the Cabinet. Mr. Walling joined her at Labor in 1938 as administrator of the Division of Public Contracts. His section merged with the Wage and Hour Division and he remained in charge until 1947 as his office gathered powers - and lawsuits, most of them derailed by the federal judiciary. The principal Roosevelt-era laws he worked under were the Walsh-Healey Act, which established labor standards for government contracts, and the Fair Labor Standards Act and Wage-and=Hour Law, which applied those standards in an often balky private sector. Mr. Walling dealt with such matters as a national minimum wage 9then 40 cents an hour and by no means universal), the work week, overtime payments and health and safety in the workplace. The laws and his rulings were challenged on constitutional grounds and with protests that extra pay for overtime was the bane of war production. But when he left office, Mr. Walling noted that the wage-hour provisions, born amid controversy, had won general acceptance. They had become, he declared, part of a "broad humanitarian program" and a long-term fact of the country's economic life. Lewis Metcalf Walling was born in Union Village, Rhode Island. He was educated at Phillips Andover Academy and Brown University and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1933. He was the Commissioner of Labor in Rhode Island when Secretary Perkins recruited him. In the 1950's the United Nations sent Mr. Walling to Guatemala to rewrite its labor laws, and he headed U.S. aid missions in Cambodia and Colombia. He then worked for the bauxite industry and finally undertook missions for the International Executive Service Corps in West Africa and Tunisia. He had a lifelong interest in the Waldorf School and anthroposophy movements founded by Rudolf Steiner, the German occultist and social philosopher. His readings with the anthroposophy, community in Vermont as a young man led to his devotion to the welfare of working people. He was chairman of the first American Waldorf School in New York City and remained a member of the board of the Waldorf School Educational Foundation of North America until 1994. Mr. Walling's first wife, the former Frances Slosson Holliday, drowned in a flash flood in Tunisia in 1972. His second wife Sydney Parker, died in 1996. An elder son, Lewis Jr., died in Vietnam in 1962. He is survived by a son, Alexander R.H., of manhattan; a stepdaughter, Judith Parker of Philadelphia; a stepson, Jameson Parker, a film and television actor in California, and a granddaughter.
  Person ID	I59078	Main Tree

  
  

  Family 1	Frances Slosson HOLLIDAY,   b. Abt 1911, Indiana, USA d. 07 Oct 1972, El Djem, Tunisia (Age 61 years)
  Children	1. Lewis Metcalfe WALLING, Jr.,   b. 1939, Rhode Island d. 11 Feb 1962, Vietnam (Age 23 years)  [Birth]   2. Alexander R.H. WALLING  [Birth]
  Family ID	F17238	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family 2	Sydney ?   d. 1996
  Family ID	F19410	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

• Sources

  [S02841] Obituary Notice for Lewis Metcalf Walling. [S01818] Ancestry.com: Social Security Death Index.