Cummings, Lawrence Belding

Lawrence Belding Cummings was born on May 5, 1881, in Columbus, Ohio.  He graduated from Harvard in 1903 and then served as Chief Clerk to the President at the Central Union Telephone Company in Indianapolis, Indiana.  Cummings married Mabel Louis Talbot in Indianapolis on May 31, 1906, and they had two sons: Talbot (born July 23, 1910) and John Lawrence (born March 22, 1913).

From August 6, 1916 to February 6, 1917, Cummings served as an ambulance driver in Section Sanitaire [Etats-] Unis (SSU) 3 and 4 of the American Field Service (AFS), a voluntary ambulance corps serving with the French Army during World War I.  His ambulance units accompanied the French Army on the Toul, Verdun, and Argonne fronts. The American Field Service ceased to exist as an independent ambulance organization when the United States entered the war in 1917, and  Cummings subsequently entered Officers' Training Camp at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana on May 1917 and was commissioned Captain, U.S. Infantry on August 15.  In January 1918, Cummings was appointed officer in command, 1^st Battalion, 334^th Infantry; he then sailed back to France in August as General Harry C. Hale’s aide-de-camp, and participated in the Meuse Argonne offensive (also known as the Battle of the Argonne Forest, September 26-November 11, 1918), the final Allied offensive of World War I.

Cummings returned to the United States in March 1919, and was discharged from the U.S. Army on April 24.  He moved from Indianapolis to his new home in Dover Plains, New York, and began working at Douglas L. Elliman & Co. at 414 Madison Avenue in New York City as a real estate broker on December 15, 1919.  Cummings also served as a member of the Harvard Club of New York, and the University Club of Indiana.

[Bio courtesy of AFS Archives, New York]