David Lawrence

Lawrence was born in Philadelphia, on December 25, 1888. He attended Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey, where he graduated as part of the Class of 1910. While at Princeton University, he was a student of Woodrow Wilson.

In 1916, Lawrence became the Washington, D.C. correspondent of New York Evening Post, which was the since-discontinued evening edition of the New York Post.

After Woodrow Wilson's reelection as U.S. president, Wilson fired his White House secretary (chief of staff) Joseph Patrick Tumulty in 1916 to placate anti-Catholic sentiment, which was being espoused from his wife and Colonel Edward M. House, his advisor. Lawrence then successfully interceded on Tumulty's behalf to remain.

Lawrence married Ellanor (Campbell Hayes Daly) Lawrence on July 17, 1918, and they had three children: David Jr., Mark, and Nancy. A foster daughter, Etienne, was married in 1927 to Herbert Sturhahn, a former college football player for Yale University. Ellanor died June 13, 1969. In 1971, to honor her memory, Lawrence gave Fairfax County, Virginia, the land that became Ellanor C. Lawrence Park in Chantilly, Virginia.

During the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, Lawrence criticized the New Deal in his 1934 book Beyond the New Deal. His observation of economic activity led him to distinguish between free enterprise and corporatism, and he wrote, "Theoretically, a corporation is a creature of a state."

He sharply criticized the use of the atomic bomb against Japan, compared it to the gas chambers of Nazi concentration camps, and maintained that the United States had become guilty and needed to apologize to the world.

He was a critic of the 1963 March on Washington and called it "the mess in Washington."