Robert Shaw Sturgis Whitman

Robert Shaw Sturgis Whitman (July 27, 1915 – February 9, 2010) was a priest of the Episcopal Church. He lived, preached and served his congregation at Trinity Church in Lenox, Massachusetts. Family Whitman was born in New York City. Both his father and grandfather were prominent New York surgeons. His grandfather, Royal Whitman, invented the mechanism used in the first hip replacement and wrote a pioneering medical textbook on orthopedic surgery that was influential in the field. Education After spending his formative years in Manhattan, Whitman went on to study at Harvard University. In what was, at the time, a humiliating turn, he was expelled after his first semester for failing an advanced-level history course he was placed in. He returned to New York and took work as a messenger boy for a carpet company and a Wall Street bank. It was at a party in New York that Whitman met the then secretary of labor, Frances Perkins. The two became friends and Perkins wound up getting Whitman a job in D.C. at the Department of Labor. Though again, it was a small post as a messenger boy.