The Depression was a living thing in those days. Everybody
was aware of it. Nobody had any extra money. There were
thousands of people out of work. You’d see people riding the
trains, on the freight cars, just going from hither to yon.
Our class entered in September of ’39. That was the year the
war started in Europe. It immediately became a great topic of
interest at Carroll. The feeling of neutrality and of our staying
out of the war was quite strong at the time. I did not go along
with that. I thought that we were going to have to get into it,
because we couldn’t let Hitler win.
[After applying for the V-7 navy officer training program,] I
was going along sailing smoothly, until they came to my right
eye. They said, “It’s a little weak for us. It’s not 20-20. Please
go get a pair of glasses and come back in a few months.” So I
did. But again they said, “No, you don’t pass.” I’ll never forget
the yeoman who was testing my eyes. He wore very thick
lenses on his glasses. I thought, “Well, they can’t use officers
who can’t see, but they can sure use yeomen.”
I had an easy war, in a sense. Out of my three years in the
military, I spent two years abroad in England, France, and
Germany. It was always behind the lines. That was not the most
exciting part of World War II, but somebody had to do it.
I took the foreign service examination over in Germany. It was
a two-and-a-half-day examination, and it was not too easy.
[In Berlin,] being blockaded in a city 100 miles from freedom
didn’t look too good. We weren’t quite sure how we could
survive the winter. But we did, thank God to the US airlift,
and also to the courage of the Germans. |
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The worst period came in November of 1948, when we had
three weeks of fog and the planes couldn’t get into Berlin.
Finally, the fog lifted.
You pray. I was always able to get to Mass there.
In London, I had the opportunity to meet Winston Churchill.
It was just after my ambassador had lunch with him, and I
was picking my ambassador up. Churchill came out. It was an
August day. He stood in the doorway of the small mansion
where he was living. His face was absolutely red. He’d been
bubbling. I could see my ambassador behind him trying to
come out, but he couldn’t get around the bulky figure. But
Churchill wasn’t looking at me so much as he was looking
at my secretary, who was standing near me. My ambassador
finally got around him and said, “I’d like you to meet Mr.
Dunnigan.” Churchill said, “Pleased to meet you.” But he
never took his eyes off the girl.
[In the mid 1960s,] I was summoned back to Washington to
take charge of the Junior Foreign Service Officers Program.
I brought in about 700 or 800 officers, many of whom have
risen to very high positions in the State Department and have
become well known in the public.
When I came in, we never worried about nuclear treaties and
things of that nature. But they do now.
The hardest time in my life was having my two wives die.
Fortunately, I got through it with the help of my children. And,
with my second wife, with the help of my stepchildren, who
were very good and very kind and whom I see frequently now.
As told to Ken Kesegichn |
