An American Masterpiece: Memories of Rosalind Kress Haley

Rosalind Kress Haley remembers her father and uncles’ roles in creation and operation of the extensive S.H. Kress & Co., as well as her multidecade activism in support of the Free Enterprise system. Ros Haley was an appointee during the Ronald Reagan administration to UNESCO and worked tirelessly in the battle against Communism.

Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly in her foreword to An American Masterpiece: Memories of Rosalind Kress Haley characterized Mrs. Haley as “one of the outstanding patriots and citizen activists of the twentieth century. She is a model for the kind of Americans we hope will put our nation on the right path.”

Born into the wealth and prominence of the Kress family, Ros was a daughter of Claude W. Kress, one of the three Kress brothers who masterminded the extensive S.H. Kress & Co. 5-and-10-cent store chain that helped to put much-needed products into the hands of Americans during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

She watched as her uncle, Sam Kress, amassed an outstanding Renaissance art collection that he later gave to the nation in what was called “the largest single gift ever given to a government by a private citizen.”

Ros was friends with Jimmy Stewart, dated Howard Hughes and was a close friend of well-known psychic Jeane Dixon. But the longtime Communist fighter also saw what she believed might be the worst threat the United States would ever face: Creeping socialism that today threatens to destroy the freedom Americans cherish.

The warning she sounds in An American Masterpiece: Memories of Rosalind Kress Haley can prevent Americans from falling victim to this dangerous threat.