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| Affiliation | Democratic |
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| Name | Erskine Bowles |
| Address |
Charlotte, North Carolina , United States |
| Email | None |
| Website | [Link] |
| Born |
August 08, 1945
(79 years)
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| Contributor | Mr. Politics |
| Last Modifed | NCdem
Aug 30, 2024 08:49pm |
| Tags |
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| Info | Erskine Boyce Bowles
Former White House Chief of Staff
Erskine Bowles came by his commitment to public service close to home. Born in Greensboro in 1945, Erskine was the second of four children of Jessamine and Hargrove "Skipper" Bowles. Skipper Bowles was a businessman and an ardent Democrat. Governor Terry Sanford tapped Skipper Bowles to head the state department of conservation and development (now called the Commerce Department). Skipper went on to serve in the North Carolina House of Representatives and the state Senate. He was the Democratic nominee for governor in 1972 and later served as chairman of the board of trustees at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Erskine grew up in Greensboro and went to college at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, majoring in business and graduating in 1967. Following graduation, he served in the Coast Guard reserves and then enrolled in Columbia Business School, earning his MBA in 1969 (and serving as the business school's student body president)
Immediately after business school, Erskine went to work for Morgan Stanley & Co.'s corporate finance group in New York.While working at Morgan Stanley, Erskine met an analyst at the firm, Crandall Close, and fell in love. The couple married in 1971 and returned to North Carolina to work on Skipper Bowles's race for governor that same year.
A New Family Brings a New Focus
In 1973, Erskine was named vice-president of corporate finance at Interstate Securities in Charlotte. Two years later, he founded the firm that would become Bowles Hollowell Conner, one of the country's leading investment banking firms specializing in middle market transactions.
Erskine and Crandall also started a family. Three children, Sam (now 27 years old), Annie (now 25) and Bill (now 24) arrived within three years of one another. Their closeness in age makes them a particularly tightly knit family, but the family has also been drawn together by another development.
In 1979, five-year-old Sam was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes. As Sam and the family learned how to live with the disease, Erskine and Crandall began an active involvement with the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation ( now called Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation ) that continues to this day. Erskine was asked to join the national board of the foundation and later became president of the organization.
Erskine led a restructuring of the organization, an effort which foundation leaders credit with enabling the foundation to raise significantly more money for scientific research to find a cure for diabetes. The foundation is now the nation's leading private source of funds for diabetes research. Three years ago, the Bowles's younger son, Bill, was also diagnosed with diabetes.
Family health matters also led Erskine to focus his attention in another area. Skipper Bowles and Erskine's sister, Martha, both died after contracting ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. As he helped care for his father and, later, his sister, he experienced firsthand the hardships that families in the Carolinas faced because of a lack of facilities and treatment centers for ALS patients. Erskine joined with former Governor Jim Martin to help spearhead the effort to establish one of the nation's leading ALS treatment facilities at the Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte. Today hundreds of Carolinians and their families receive the highest quality of care and treatment for ALS at the center.
Erskine served as vice chairman of the Carolinas Medical Center and as a trustee of the Duke Endowment until entering the race for U.S. Senate in October 2001.
Serving the Nation
In 1993, President Bill Clinton asked Bowles to head the Small Business Administration. Bowles reorganized the agency and significantly increased the number of loans awarded to businesses owned by minorities and women. He also reduced the agency's basic loan application from a one-inch thick document to just one page.
Bowles served as Deputy Chief of Staff to the president from October 1994 to December 1995. One of his chief responsibilities was the coordination of the government's response to the bombing of
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