Cole, Wayne S.

Born in 1922; author, historian specializing in the history of American foreign relations, and professor of history at Iowa State University (1954-1965) and the University of Maryland (1965-1992).

From the description of Wayne S. Cole research collection, 1946-1994. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 70972854

Wayne S. Cole was a professional historian specializing in the history of American foreign relations, particularly during the Franklin D. Roosevelt era before and during World War II. Much of his research and writing focused on non-interventionist or so-called "isolationist" opposition to American involvement in World War II. Cole was born in Manning in western Iowa on November 11, 1922 of Scotch-Irish and Norwegian-American descent. In 1936 he moved with his parents and younger sister to Slater in central Iowa where he graduated from high school in 1940. He attended Iowa State Teachers College in Cedar Falls before enlisting in the Army Air Force during World War II. He trained as a single-engine airplane pilot, receiving his pilot wings and commission at Luke Field, Arizona on February 8, 1944. Ordered to flight instructor school at Randolph Field, Texas, he served as a basic flight instructor at Merced Army Air Base in California, and later at Minter Field, Bakersfield, California, until the war ended in September 1945. Returning to civilian life, Cole graduated from Iowa State Teachers College (now called the University of Northern Iowa) in 1946 and taught high school one year before enrolling in graduate school at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Specializing in American diplomatic history under the direction of Professor Fred Harvey Harrington, Cole earned his master''s degree in 1948 and his doctorate in January 1951. On December 24, 1950, he married Virginia Rae Miller in Madison, Wisconsin. They had one son, Thomas Roy Cole, born in Ames, Iowa on August 29, 1960. In 1950, Cole began his university teaching career at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville before accepting a visiting position at Iowa State College in 1952 and moving there for a regular appointment in 1954. His first two books (on the America First Committee and on Senator Gerald P. Nye) were published while he was on the faculty there, and in 1962-63 he served as a Fulbright lecturer at the University of Keele in England while on leave from Iowa State University. In 1965, Cole was appointed professor of history at the University of Maryland in College Park where he taught American diplomatic history for twenty-seven years. While on the faculty at the University of Maryland he wrote four books: an interpretive textbook on the history of American foreign relations, a study of Charles A. Lindbergh''s non-interventionist activities before American entry into World War II, a major volume on Franklin D. Roosevelt and the isolationists, and a general study of diplomatic relations between Norway and the United States from 1905 to 1955. He was awarded fellowships by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (1973) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (1978-79). He held various positions in the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR), rising to become national president of SHAFR in 1973. The University of Maryland named him Distinguished Scholar-Teacher in 1989-90. After his retirement in 1992 at the age of 69, Cole was named professor emeritus, and continued to live in suburban Maryland just outside Washington, D. C. In 1994 the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations honored him with the Norman and Laura Graebner Award as the senior historian who had contributed most significantly to the fuller understanding of American diplomatic history. His seventh and last book, published in 1995, was a collection of interpretive essays entitled, Determinism and American Foreign Relations During the Franklin D. Roosevelt Era.

From the description of Cole, Wayne S., 1922- (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration). naId: 10678007