McGeorge Bundy (1919-1996) served as national security adviser to both President John F. Kennedy and President Lyndon B. Johnson. He later was president of the Ford Foundation and was instrumental in expanding its programs to emphasize equal opportunity in the United States. When he died at the age of 77, he was serving as a scholar in residence at the Carnegie Corporation.

McGeorge Bundy was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on March 30, 1919. His father was a close associate of Henry L. Stimson, who served Herbert Hoover as secretary of state and Franklin D. Roosevelt as secretary of war. Bundy graduated first in his class at Yale in 1940 and became a junior fellow at Harvard in 1941. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II as an aide to Admiral Alan Kirk. In that capacity he assisted with the planning for the invasions of Sicily and France.

After he...