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WelcomeBorn into rare wealth and privilege –– into a family that once owned The Bronx and Fort Ticonderoga, which remains today under family control –– Claiborne Pell became a man of the people in his 36 years as a U.S. Senator from Rhode Island. He created the Pell Grants and the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities. He opposed the Vietnam War and, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he moved America closer to peace. He envisioned a future built on innovative technology. And throughout his long career, he was a gentleman in debate, a model of civil discourse.
But Pell was more than an uncommon public servant. A member of Newport High Society, his marriage to A & P heiress Nuala O’Donnell increased his fortune –– yet he wore hand-me-downs and church-sale suits. An unconventional thinker who believed in ESP, he embarked on a quest to find what lies beyond death, in hopes of contacting his late father. And when he himself died, at the age of 90, after a long and uncomplaining battle with Parkinson’s Disease, Bill Clinton, Joe Biden and Ted Kennedy all eulogized him –– a sign of the stature he had achieved. Now, read the first and only biography of A Most Uncommon Man, the eighth book by writer and filmmaker G. Wayne Miller. Available now in hardcover, in Kindle, and from iTunes |
