Robert N. Slawson Collection, 1902-1958 | Archives of the American Field Service and AFS Intercultural Programs

Robert Newman Slawson, often referred to by his family and friends as “Newman,” was born May 16, 1898, to Carrie Bowen and Sayer J. Slawson in New York, New York. Sayer J. Slawson had married three sisters, the first one dying without children. Robert Slawson consequently had two older sisters, Eva Frances and Ethel Louis, from his biological mother and three younger half-siblings, Kenneth Homer, Helen Bernice, and Edson Earl, from his stepmother and aunt, Mary Bowen Slawson.

Slawson did not graduate from high school, and instead went to work in a family milk pasteurization and delivery business before he joined the United States Army Ambulance Service (USAAS) on June 18, 1917.  The USAAS was established by General Order No. 75 of the War Department in May 1917 and provided medical services and transportation to the French and Italian armies during the war. Slawson arrived at Camp Crane in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in June of 1917 and was assigned to Section Sanitaire [États-] Unis (SSU) 575, the Columbia College unit. His unit left for France on Christmas Day in 1917, and arrived on January 11, 1918. SSU 575 began active engagement in March 1918 when they were stationed with the 131st Infantry Division of the French Army. Following the Armistice in November of 1918, Slawson traveled with SSU 575 to Ludwigshaven, Germany, until April 22, 1919.

After the war, Slawson moved to Cambridge, New York, where he worked as an assistant superintendant of the same milk pasteurization company he worked at prior to the war, known as Sheffield Farms Milk Co.  In October 1920, he returned to New York City where he worked for the main office of the same company, which later merged, changed its name to Sheffield Farms, and was eventually sold to National Dairy Products Corporation. In 1937 Slawson was named a director of Sealtest Sheffield Farms Division of National Dairy Products Corporation, becoming the manager of the pasteurizing department. Slawson was transferred to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1946 to run a subsidiary of the company, Luck Dairy, where he remained until being transferred back to New York.  In the 1950s, Slawson returned to New York and became vice president of the Sealtest Sheffield Farms Division of the National Dairy Products Corporation, which ultimately became part of Kraft Foods, Inc.

Slawson married Florence Buell on December 10, 1921, and had three children, Carolyn, Barbara, and Robert N. Slawson, Jr.

Robert Newman Slawson passed away on January 20, 1958, at the age of 59.