Obituary
James Armsey, 90
James W. Armsey, 90, a former Ford Foundation grantmaker who helped establish educational television stations and their national production center, died Nov. 2, 2008, at Clark-Lindsey Village, a retirement community in Urbana, Ill., according to press reports.
In various high posts at the foundation between 1956 and 1975, he oversaw grants totaling $497 million, including $362 million to universities and colleges, and prompted racial integration of education by instigating a ban on grants to segregated universities and promoting graduate study for minority group members, the New York Times reported Nov. 19.
Armsey also oversaw about $100 million in grants to early educational TV stations and their main national program source, National Educational Television, according to Jim Robertson in his book, TeleVisionaries. The grants included funds for pubTV stations in New York, Washington, Los Angeles and Chicago, among others.
“He probably fought for and won more dollars for public television than anyone else,” Robertson wrote.
Armsey arrived at Ford not long before Ampex developed video recording technology, adding new fluidity to national production and distribution, and Ford-funded NET set up shop in New York City, transforming itself from the Educational Television and Radio Center in Ann Arbor, Mich., according to Robertson.
Armsey and his boss, Ford Foundation President Henry T. Heald, were firm supporters of NET and its dynamic first president, Jack White, with whom they had worked at Illinois Institute of Technology. Armsey was public relations director of IIT in 1952 when its president, Heald, became chancellor of New York University. He followed Heald to NYU and then, four years later, to the Ford Foundation, according to the Times.
At the Ford Foundation, Armsey had the authority to dispense grants of up to $15,000 on his signature alone, recalled retired WGBH producer Michael Ambrosino on WGBH’s alumni site, wgbhalumni.org.
When WGBH visited with Armsey, “Jim would listen carefully, ask how we intended to make our projects self-supporting and sustaining and then would tell us just how much to ask for,” Ambrosino said. “Our ensuing proposals were only a few pages long and for sums like $14,950.”
One such grant underwrote the startup of the Eastern Educational Television Network, a regional interconnection that preceded PBS and was a lineal ancestor of American Public Television.
In retirement in Urbana, Ill., Armsey served as a member of the Illinois Arts Council, and was active in groups affiliated with the University of Illinois.
Survivors include Beth, his wife of 67 years.
Web page posted Dec. 22, 2008
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