Harold C. Jaquith

Harold C. Jaquith was born in Nashua, New Hampshire, in 1889. Like many of the Americans who would lead Near East Relief in the field, he was educated for the ministry: a bachelor's degree from Trinity College, a master's from Columbia University, and a doctorate of divinity from Union Theological Seminary. He began his career as assistant pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in New York City in 1912. Five years later, he was named assistant secretary to Near East Relief. In 1919, he toured the Near East as leader of the Sunday School Commission and produced a preliminary assessment of conditions on the ground.

Jaquith became Managing Director of NER in Constantinople in 1921, overseeing operations for 180,000 orphans and refugees in the Constantinople area. His cablegrams from the field documented the deteriorating refugee situation through 1922, including the Turkish Nationalist army's use of the post-Smyrna chaos to conduct additional deportations. His reporting reached The New Near East magazine and the national press, and helped sustain the citizen philanthropy campaign that funded NER's emergency response.

In 1923, Jaquith was appointed to help oversee the resettlement of approximately 400,000 ethnic Turks from Greece under the population exchange that followed the Smyrna catastrophe. He also negotiated the release of thousands of prisoners of the Greco-Turkish War. Both governments decorated him for the work.

Jaquith met Marie Harin at the NER office in Constantinople. Born in Yalta in 1898, she spoke Russian, French, and English; her family had fled Russia in 1920, and when they continued on to Yugoslavia, she chose to remain in Constantinople, taking the name Mary and working as an interpreter for Near East Relief. They were married in Yugoslavia in November 1925 and made their home in Constantinople.

In 1927, Jaquith became NER Associate General Secretary, a role in which he was instrumental in overseeing the organization's transition to the Near East Foundation. The family moved to New York City in 1929. Jaquith served as an executive officer with NEF from 1930 to 1933, then left to pursue a career in higher education administration. He died in April 1943 at the age of 54.

Mary Jaquith served in the Second World War, working for the FBI in New Haven, Connecticut, where her language skills were used in counterintelligence. After the war, she taught French and Russian at the high school and college levels. In 1946, she became one of the United Nations' first simultaneous interpreters. She retired from full-time interpreting at sixty but continued on a freelance basis until eighty-two. She died in 1985, at eighty-seven.

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