page_title: Grant Stockdale
section_title: Ambassador to Ireland
hierarchical_section_title: Grant Stockdale / Career / Ambassador to Ireland
caption_attribution_description: English: President John F. Kennedy meets with Ambassadors before the Ambassadors depart for their respective posts, Oval Office, White House, Washington, D.C. Left to right: US Ambassador to Ireland, Edward G. Stockdale; US Ambassador to Finland, Bernard Gufler; US Ambassador to Nicaragua, Aaron S. Brown; President Kennedy; US Ambassador to the Netherlands, John Rice; US Ambassador to Sweden, J. Graham Parsons; US Ambassador to Denmark, William Blair; US Ambassador to Guinea, William Attwood.
context_page_description: Edward Grant Stockdale, known as Grant Stockdale, was a Florida businessman and friend of President John F. Kennedy who served as United States Ambassador to Ireland from 1961 to 1962.
context_section_description: At the start of the Kennedy administration, Newsweek magazine described Stockdale as "an ardent New Frontiersman and sometime participant in Kennedy touch-football games". Kennedy nominated Stockdale to serve as Ambassador to Ireland in February 1961. Time magazine criticized Kennedy for nominating Stockdale after promising during the campaign to appoint ambassadors on the basis of ability alone. It asked "where reward stopped and ability began". The Senate confirmed the appointment on March 28, 1961.
  In April, 1961, just before leaving for Ireland, Stockdale was sued by a business rival that claimed he had used "undue influence" to win government contracts for a Miami vending machines company in which he held stock. The Dade County Circuit Court dismissed that suit as "frivolous" and the Florida Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that dismissal. Congress later investigated those vending machine companies as part of the Bobby Baker scandal investigations into bribery of members of Congress, though Stockdale was not a target of the investigation. When interviewed by the Miami Herald during the Baker investigation, Stockdale said: "I am a business man, but I still consider myself a quasi-public figure. I am very meticulous in my dealings."
  Stockdale presented his credentials in Dublin on May 17, 1961, and served until July 7, 1962.
caption: Stockdale (far left) with Kennedy and other ambassadors in March 1961
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