Manly Fleischmann was a renowned attorney whose record of public service included high-level positions in the Harry S Truman Administration and in the administration of New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller

Nelson Rockefeller

Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller was the 41st Vice President of the United States , serving under President Gerald Ford, and the 49th Governor of New York , as well as serving the Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower administrations in a variety of positions...

. He served his nation as President Truman's Defense Production Administrator for the Korean War

Korean War

The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...

. At the request of Gov. Rockefeller, he chaired the New York State Commission on the Quality, Cost and Financing of Elementary and Secondary Education (known as The Fleischmann Commission).

Early life

Manly Fleischmann was born July 15, 1908 at Hamburg, New York, a suburb of Buffalo. He was one of many sons of a famous Buffalo trial lawyer, Simon Fleischmann. The family had a somewhat ambiguous religious history, having strains of both Judaism and Quakerism in its heritage. The Fleischmann boys remembered of their childhood that a Quaker idiom was the household vernacular when they were growing up (that is, use of 'thee' and 'thou', etc.). Manly Fleischmann never practiced the Jewish religion. He and his future wife, Lois, worshiped and raised their family in the Episcopal Church.

Fleischmann received his undergraduate training at Harvard College (1929) and his law degree from the University of Buffalo (1933).

War and Public Service

Buffalo native John Lord O'Brian, a friend of Simon Fleischmann, was General Counsel to Franklin Roosevelt's War Production Board during World War II. He named Manly Fleischmann his Assistant General Counsel. Fleischmann remained in this post until 1943, when he joined the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, predecessor of the present Central Intelligence Agency), serving as a Navy officer detached to a British Army unit involved in espionage in Japanese-occupied Burma. For his service, he was later decorated by both the U.S. and Thai governments.

At the War's end, Fleischmann returned to Buffalo and founded a private law practice, Fleischmann Brothers, with his sibling, Adelbert (1912-2008). However, with the advent of the Korean War, in 1950, he returned to Washington as General Counsel to the War Production Board.

In 1951, President Truman appointed him Defense Production Administrator and National Production Administrator, where he exercised unparalleled power, achieving the anomaly of war production while maintaining a domestic economy. He also served as U.S. Chairman of the International Materials Conference.

As Korean War Production Administrator, Fleischmann was described as " . . . the man who exercises the greatest control over the [American] economy in peacetime history." Harper's Magazine, January 1952, pp. 45 - 50, at p. 46. The author, Robert J. Donovan, said Fleischmann " . . . is representative of the rare type of government executive whose judgment is unfettered by political loyalties and whose decisions are unhampered by past ties with business, labor, or other big interests." Harper's, at p. 45. And the magazine concluded that, "[a]t the age of forty-three Fleischmann is looked upon as one of the ablest administrators in Washington, at a time when Washington sorely needs competent administrators." Harper's at p. 50.

President Truman later sent Fleischmann to Europe as one of his representatives in discussions that would lead to the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

After the war, in 1952, Fleischmann, who had turned down President Truman's offer to appoint him Ambassador to Indonesia, returned to private law practice. He was a founding partner of two major firms: Webster Sheffield Fleischmann Hitchcock & Chrystie (New York City) and Jaeckle, Fleischmann, Kelly, Swart & Augspurger (Buffalo).

The Fleischmann Commission

In 1969, New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller appointed Fleischmann to head a state commission to study the quality, cost and financing of public education.

In 1972, Fleischmann issued his report (Viking Press 1972). It stunned the educational establishment by: proposing busing to end racial segregation; opposing most state aid to non-public schools; and proposing a state takeover of all public elementary and secondary school costs to be financed by a state tax on real property.

Fleischmann suffered a stroke that debilitated him during the final decade of his life. He died March 25, 1987, at Buffalo after a fall at his home.