Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. During the Great Depression, Mr. Martin became the first paid president of the New York Stock Exchange at the age of 31 and was considered "the boy wonder of Wall Street." He was the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board under five presidents from 1951-1970. His father, William McChesney Martin Senior, was a prosperous banker in St. Louis. After graduating from Yale, William Jr. got a job working under his father at the Federal Reserve Bank in St. Louis. He soon discovered a flair for math and joined the brokerage house of A.G. Edwards. Before long, the firm moved him to New York, where he bought his own seat on the New York Stock Exchange. During World War II he was drafted into the Army, but ended up a colonel and was installed in Washington as a Lend-Lease aide to Harry Hopkins, the confidante of Franklin Roosevelt. After the war ended, he settled in Washington, first as head of the Export-Import Bank and then as an assistant secretary of the Treasury. President Harry Truman allowed Federal Reserve Bank chairman Thomas McCabe to resign and appointed Mr. Martin to take his place. He took the post and set the standard to the Federal Reserve Bank's independence from the White House and the Treasury Department. His nineteen year tenure as Federal Reserve Bank chairman expired in 1970. After that, he declined most offers to lecture, write or testify. Mr. Martin was married to Cynthia Davis, the daughter of St. Louisan Dwight Davis, the donor of tennis' Davis Cup. Known as "the Father of the Modern Fed," Mr. Martin served the longest of all the chairmen of the Federal Reserve System. He is honored by the William McChesney Martin, Jr. Federal Reserve Board building in Washington, D.C. When he broke ground for the building in 1971, he became the first living public servant to have a federal government building named for him. (Some information for this biography was used with permission from the author of the book "Movers and Shakers, Scalawags and Suffragettes: Tales From Bellefontaine Cemetery" by Carol Ferring Shepley, published by the University of Missouri Press 2008.)