This series documents Robert A. Brooks' involvement as an employee and a stockholder in Harbridge House, Inc. Records in this collection include business letters,
interoffice memoranda, board of directors' meeting agendas and notes, and stockholders' reports. Also included are Brooks' personal holdings and transactions with the company,
memorabilia, and awards received.
Collection Citation:
Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 7304, Robert Angus Brooks Papers
This collection documents the different stages in Robert Brooks's education and career. Most of the material is professional in nature; there are few intimately personal
letters or recordings. Much of the collection consists of business correspondence, notes, and financial records, as well as personal memorabilia, poetry and poetry translations.
Brooks's correspondence can also be found in the records of the Office of the Under Secretary, Record Unit 137. The papers of Robert A. Brooks at the Smithsonian Institution
Archives can be supplemented by a collection of papers relating to his term as Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations and Logistics located at the Lyndon Baines
Johnson Presidential Library, in Austin, Texas.
Historical Note:
Robert Angus Brooks (1920-1976) was born in Calcutta, India, to American parents. He attended preparatory school in Scotland at Dalhousie Castle school (1928-1934),
and later at Roxbury Latin School in Massachusetts (1934-1936). He received degrees in classical philology from Harvard--B.A., 1940, M.A., 1941, Ph.D., 1949. During World
War II he served in the U.S. Army Air Force, and was promoted to Captain in 1945. He married Jane S. Kochmann in 1943.
After the war he was a Junior Fellow at Harvard, and later Instructor of Classics (1949-1951). From 1951 to 1965 he worked in the Boston consulting firm, Harbridge House,
Inc. In 1965 he was appointed by Lyndon Johnson as Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations and Logistics, and served there until 1969, when he rejoined Harbridge
House as its President. In 1971 he accepted the position as Under Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution where he remained until his death in 1976.
