Robert
D. Stuart Jr. (April 26, 1916—May 8, 2014)
was born in Hubbard Woods and grew up in Lake Forest, although he spent a large
amount of time out west, at the family ranch in Wyoming. He graduated high
school at the Los Alamos Ranch School, New Mexico, earning the honor of the Philo
Sherman Bennett Prize in Political Science. He completed his undergraduate
degree at Princeton in 1937 and married Barbara Edwards a year later.

Stuart
gained his law degree from Yale in 1946, after serving in the military during
World War II, a war he initially objected to. As his son Alexander “Sandy”
Stuart explained in an interview with the New York Times after his
death, “He wasn’t a pacifist; he wasn’t an isolationist. He believed
America should not be engaging in another major European conflict, that we
should be strengthening ourselves.” Stuart, at the age of 24, was the
founding director of the America First Committee, a grass-roots group that advocated
against US participation in the war in Europe. The group became one of the
largest organized antiwar groups in US history, reaching 800,000 members, with
notable supporters such as Charles Lindbergh, General Robert E. Wood, and
publisher Robert R. McCormick. The Committee was dissolved after the Pearl
Harbor attack. Stuart enlisted in the Army and was stationed in Europe.

The
Stuart family was intrinsically involved in the development and growth of the
Quaker Oats Company. Robert Jr’s great-grandfather, John Stuart, established
the North Star Mills Company in Canada in 1850. In 1888 they merged with seven
other oat milling companies to form the American Cereal Company, renaming it in
1901 the Quaker Oats Company (after their largest selling product). The family
continued to run Quaker Oats, managing the marketing and promotions for the
company and are credited with their marked financial growth through the 1900s.

Stuart Jr. became the company president
in 1962, overseeing their massive expansion from $500 million in 1968 to $2
billion in 1979, through expanding the portfolio with companies like
Fisher-Price.

After his retirement from Quaker Oats in
1984, Stuart was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to be the ambassador to
Norway, where he served until 1989.

Stuart was married to Barbara for 55 years,
with whom he had four children: Robert Douglas III, Sandy, James, and Marian.
He remarried in 1995 after Barbara’s death to Lillan Lovenskiold, who survived
him. Stuart’s mother, Harriet McClure, was the
daughter of Rev. James G. K. McClure, the pastor of First Presbyterian Church
and president of Lake Forest College. The Stuart Commons at Lake Forest College is named for the family.