Ward died Feb. 23, 2017.

He prepared for Princeton at Phillips Exeter Academy. His Princeton career was interrupted when he left in 1942 to join the American Field Service organization. He returned at the end of the war and earned his degree in the SPIA. Ward was a member of Cap and Gown. He was on the tennis team and was an All-American soccer player and team captain. Ward went on to study at Columbia Law School.

When former Secretary of the Army Frank Pace became head of the newly created Corporation for Public Broadcasting, he enlisted Ward to shape the organization into a concrete reality. Ward served as executive vice president of station WNET in New York. He was credited with enabling Ken Burns to develop his career in the documentary film industry, which was one of his many accomplishments as an executive in public broadcasting.

Ward also received credit for the reorganization of station WETA in Washington, D.C., which under his leadership produced such programs as The MacNeil/Lehrer Report, Washington Week in Review, and A Capitol Fourth. He was given the Ralph Lowell Medal, the public-television industry’s highest distinction.

Ward is survived by his two daughters, Carolyn Chamberlin and Margot Chamberlin, and four grandchildren.

Undergraduate Class of 1943