Balfour, Don

From GWUEncyc

Alumni

Don Balfour earned a B.A. degree from The George Washington University in 1945. While attending the university, Mr. Balfour worked as a reporter and later editor of the student newspaper the Hatchet. He was also active with the University Glee Club and Cue and Curtin (drama). Don Balfour interviewed the new commissioner for the GI Bill while serving as editor for the Hatchet. At the meeting he signed up for the GI Bill (having served in the U.S. Army from 1942-43, before attending GW) and thus became the first recipient of the GI Bill in the United States. As he explained it:

"…at that time the veterans at the university had formed a club, had been given a place to use as a club house, on 22nd street, and the GI Bill was in the process of being argued in Congress and being signed…."

By way of background, on June 22, 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the "Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944," better known as the "GI Bill of Rights." As early as 1942, plans were being made to handle the anticipated postwar problems. The National Resources Planning Board, a White House agency, had studied postwar manpower needs and in June 1943 recommended a series of programs for education and training.

It was the American Legion, however, that is credited with designing the main features of the GI Bill and pushing it through Congress. The Legion overcame objections by other organizations that the proposed bill was too sweeping and could jeopardize veterans getting any help at all. At the time Congress already had failed to act on about 640 bills concerning veterans. The GI Bill was introduced in the Congress in January 1944, and after a nationwide campaign it passed on June 13. This set the stage for Don Balfour to act.

“So that’s what led me to seek an appointment with the Veteran’s Administration with the man [John M. MacCammon] who was going to head that division, in order to get a story for the Hatchet. And I took along with me my discharge so that I could…so that I could go to his secretary after the interview with him and get the application and start the process. That was on June the 23rd of 1944, and after interviewing him and getting all the information I wanted, I asked him how I would go about enrolling in the GI Bill, or for GI Bill benefits. And he had just received while I was there a call from the White House telling him to go ahead and start processing. This was I think the day after the President had signed the bill. So I whipped out my discharge and handed it to him, and he dictated this letter which was my application for benefits, and then he took my discharge and this letter and gave it to his secretary, and shortly thereafter he sent a letter to Miss Sedgwick, who was then the secretary of the university, the secretary to the president of the university, and that was in July, telling her that I had been approved, and shortly thereafter another letter also went to her, went to me making it legal. In September of ’44, that allowed me to go to school during the summer program under the G.I. bill….”

Document Information

Images: 1
Photographic Credit: Balfour papers/MS2130
Author or Source: 1999 oral history with Balfour/MS0371; alumni biographical files/MS2130
Document Location: University Archives
Date Added to Encyclopedia: December 21, 2006
Prepared by: Lyle Slovick, Assistant University Archivist

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