People Remembered: Walter Diamond

Walter H. Diamond, 95, an expert on international taxation and trade and an OPC member for 52 years, died of kidney failure May 23 in White Plains, New York.

Diamond, who joined the Club in 1956, and his wife of 60 years, Dorothy, co-authored 81 tax and trade books and more than 100 investment booklets. In 2005, Diamond published an autobiography of his nearly 70 years in journalism during which he interviewed 100 world leaders, One of a Kind: Learning the Secrets of World Leaders [Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press] (February/March 2006 Bulletin).

“Gandhi was his favorite,” Dorothy, who survives, was quoted in The New York Times. Walter was working for the Federal Reserve at the start of World War II, and he was put in charge of closing and liquidating German, Japanese and Italian banks operating in the United States.

After U.S. Navy service during WWII in Europe and the Pacific, he helped prepare foreign exchange recommendation for the Bretton Woods conference, which established the International Monetary Fund. Diamond’s career included director of the economics department of McGraw-Hill International and international taxation manager at two accounting firms, Deloitte & Touche and KPMG. The Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego awarded Walter and Dorothy honorary juris doctorate degrees last December (May Bulletin). “Walter was a lovely and very active guy right into old age,” Sonya Fry, the OPC’s executive director commented.