A Remembrance of Louis Brownlow

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12178
• Date: 01 January 2014
• Published date: 01 January 2014

Perspective

Douglas W. Ayres holds degrees

from Roanoke College, the University

of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and

Syracuse University. He was with the Public

Administration Service for three tenures

totaling a decade. He was town clerk and

assistant town manager of Salem, Virginia;

city manager of Melbourne, Florida; Salem,

Oregon; and Inglewood, California; and

general manager of Leisure World, Laguna

Hills. He was simultaneously professor

of public f‌i nance in the Graduate School

of the University of Southern California

and founder and chief executive off‌i cer

of Management Services, Inc., a forensic

accounting, f‌i nancial services, and municipal

bond underwriting f‌i rm with more than

350 client jurisdictions for some 750

engagements. He is retired and lives in

Sedona, Arizona.

E-mail: dougsedona@esedona.net

12 Public Administration Review • January | February 2014

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 74, Iss. 1, pp. 12–13. © 2014 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12178.

Douglas W. Ayres

Editor’s Note:  is Perspective is the f‌i rst

in a series of ref‌l ections about ASPA’s

founders in commemoration of the Society’s

75th anniversary.

JLP

The National Governmental Center (NGC)

was part of the University of Chicago and

headquartered on its campus, at 1313 East

60th Street.  e NGC was the repository and center

of much governmental innovation and knowledge

from 1930 deep into the 1970s. “1313” housed

the National Governors’ Conference, International

City Managers Association, American Public Works

Association, American Public Welfare Association,

International Public Personnel Association, American

Waterworks Association, American Society for Public

Administration (ASPA), and Municipal Finance

Of‌f‌i cers Association, among many similar groups. A

Nazi-sympathizing organization called it “a conspiracy

by well-educated career bureaucrats who control the

government of the United States” (Hindman 1959).

Louis Brownlow, a founder of ASPA, also founded the

NGC in 1933.

 e Public Administration Service (PAS), the consult-

ing, research, central services, and publishing branch

of the NGC, had two regional of‌f‌i ces: one in San

Francisco and the other in Washington, D.C. In

1961–62, I headed the latter.

Brownlow was a third-grade dropout from Buf‌f alo,

Missouri. But, as he was wont to say, “I was cursed

with a photographic memory. I not only can remem-

ber and call up word-for-word everything I have ever

read or heard and everyone I have met, but the curse

is that I can’t FORGET anything, either.”

He had been a newspaper reporter assigned to the

White House during the tenure of Woodrow Wilson,

who got to know and respect Brownlow. In 1915,

Wilson appointed Brownlow as one of the three

commissioners who then ran the government of the

District of Columbia. After his initial Washington

service, Brownlow went on to be city manager of

Petersburg, Virginia, and Knoxville, Tennessee, and

advisor to every president from Wilson through John F.

Kennedy.

In 1962, Brownlow was 83, widowed, and living alone

in D.C. While he was somewhat frail of body, he had

not lost a step intellectually and still of‌f ered insights,

advice, and a sense of history to a vast array of govern-

ment of‌f‌i cials.  e PAS president “assigned” me to

“take Mr. Brownlow to lunch at the Willard Hotel

every Wednesday noon” that I was in Washington.

After the f‌i rst engagement, it would have taken a

major emergency for me to miss my Wednesday lunch

with “Brownie,” as he insisted I call him.

Louis Brownlow was a founding father of the modern

United States. In 1936, Franklin D. Roosevelt made

him chair of what became known as the “Brownlow

Commission” but of‌f‌i cially was the President’s

Committee on Administrative Management. In 1937,

this group and Brownlow’s fertile mind produced

numerous “inventions.” Few have any concept from

whence they came. Among these were the Of‌f‌i ce of

the President, the executive annual budget, the Of‌f‌i ce

of Management and Budget (originally called the

Bureau of the Budget), staf‌f assistants to the president,

and the federal f‌i scal year.

Early one Wednesday, I received an extremely rare

telephone call from Mr. Brownlow. He simply asked,

“Could I bring a guest to lunch today?” Naturally, I

consented, but I wondered whether Mr. Brownlow,

a widower for several years now, was to squire a lady

friend.

I went to the Willard a bit early and there was Mr.

Brownlow, waiting. Another distinguished-looking

gentlemen, not a lady, accompanied him. If possible,

the man appeared to be even more dapper and elderly

than Brownlow.

A Remembrance of Louis Brownlow