Leonard Freel Woodcock (February 15, 1911 – January 16, 2001) was President of the United Auto Workers (UAW) and the first US ambassador to China after being the last Chief of the US Liaison Office in Beijing. Early life Woodcock was born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1911. He was the son of Ernest Woodcock and Margaret Freel. At the outbreak of World War I, the family was living in Germany, and Ernest was interned. While Leonard had been born in the United States, his parents were British. Both mother and son returned to the United Kingdom for the duration of the war, where he attended school. The family members were eventually reunited and sought a new life in North America. Originally settled in Canada, they relocating a few years later, to Detroit, Michigan. Early career The pressures of the Great Depression led Woodcock to drop out of College of the City of Detroit in 1933. He found work as a machine assembler in Detroit, and both he and his father became involved in the union movement. Woodcock became International Vice President in 1955. UAW president In 1970, he became UAW president, succeeding Walter Reuther, who died in a plane crash. Woodcock was an active participant in the Civil Rights Movement, marching with Martin Luther King Jr. and adding his voice and political clout to the cause. He was a champion of both minority and women's rights, pushing for comprehensive nondiscrimination rules and introducing the first union-wide contracted maternity leave in the United States. Woodcock appeared on Nixon's enemies list at #9 while he was UAW president with the annotation "No comments necessary." China In 1977, Woodcock retired from the union and was named by President Jimmy Carter as head of the United States Liaison Office in Beijing, which, in the absence of full diplomatic relations, served as the de facto U.S. embassy in the People's Republic of China. During the same period, Woodcock was charged with leading a special delegation to Laos and Vietnam in search of US soldiers who were prisoners-of-war or missing in action. After leading negotiations to establish full diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China in 1979, Woodcock was appointed the first US ambassador there. He was the first ambassador to Mainland China since 1949, when Leighton Stuart served as ambassador to the Republic of China. Though some questioned appointing a labor leader to