Frederick Blantford Bate

Frederick Blantford Bate was an American broadcaster of the early 20th century, and was a representative for NBC in Britain during World War II. He was the husband of Vera Bate Lombardi, the British socialite, and the father of Bridget Bate Tichenor, the surrealist artist.

Frederick Blantford Bate
Born
Frederick Blantford Bate

circa 1886
Virginia, United States
DiedOctober 24, 1970
Waterford, Virginia, United States
NationalityAmerican
Occupation(s)Journalist and broadcaster
Spouse(s)(1) Sally Plows, divorced
(2)Vera Bate Lombardi,
(3) Genevieve Gillette
ChildrenBridget Bate Tichenor (by Vera Bate Lombardi),

Career

Frederick Blantford Bate born in Virginia in 1886. His first marriage was to the Chicago candy-manufacturing heiress Sally K. Plows (1889-1947), that ended in divorce on the grounds of his desertion.[1]

He was active with the first automobile ambulance service during the First World War and was a mechanical officer, involved with the organization of the first American Ambulance that became an ambulance service connected with the First World War armies in the field.[2][3] During his time in France he met Vera Arkwright, who was serving at the American hospital in Paris. They married in 1916.[4] Their daughter Bridget was born in France in November 1917. Fred and Vera divorced in 1929.

Bate had served on a War Reparations Committee headed by Owen D. Young of General Electric, and it was through Young that he had come to the attention of the network. Bate came to know Edward, Prince of Wales, as a result of his marriage in 1916 to Vera Arkwright, who was known to the Prince. This connection became significant for NBC when Edward's relationship with Wallis Simpson threw the British Government into a constitutional crisis. Because of Bate's connections, NBC provided more up-to-the-minute radio coverage of that story than any rival networks.[5] Bate was the NBC representative in London at the time and had access to the King.[6] When the story of the king's affair with Wallis Simpson and the possibility of an abdication suddenly broke on a startled world, Bate was on holiday in New York. The fastest way back to London then took five days. He telephoned Alistair Cooke and asked him to go immediately to Broadcasting House and beam over a news dispatch for NBC before the midnight circuit, which the rival radio network, CBS, had booked. Cooke did so, and for the next 10 days of the abdication crisis he broadcast to America six or seven times a day.[7]

In 1940, Bate was wounded by shrapnel when a bomb hit NBC's offices in London during World War II. He returned to work after spending 10 days in a hospital.[8] At the end of the Second World War Bate moved back to the United States. He died, at Waterford, Virginia, in October 1970.

References
  1. "Bridget Bate Tichenor Website". Archived from the original on 2014-05-04. Retrieved 2019-12-21.
  2. American Ambulance in WW I
  3. Andrew, Adam Piatt: Friends of France: The Field Service of the American Ambulance Described By Its Members, Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1916, Chapter XV.
  4. Marlene Eilers Koenig (2010-04-14). "Vera Arkwright to Marry Frederick Bate 1916". Royal Musingsof. Retrieved 2018-06-02. She made 'plenty of capital of the royal blood in the veins' of her husband, George, the eldest son of the late Duke of Cambridge and his morganatic wife, Louise Fairbrother.
  5. Max Jordan and NBC Archived 2011-08-30 at the Wayback Machine
  6. "WINDSOR AT DINNER ONLY NON-AMERICAN; Edward to Use Ring of Welsh Gold, Like Others in Family, in Marriage Ceremony", New York Times, May 23, 1937
  7. Obituary: Alistair Cooke
  8. Brown, Wilson (December 28, 1940). "New York" (PDF). Movie Radio Guide. 10 (12): 38. Archived from the original (PDF) on 19 January 2015. Retrieved 19 January 2015.
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