I was raised in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and went to Carroll in ’39. I graduated as one of three graduation classes in 1943, which was an unusual year. At the end of three years in the army, I took the examination for the United States foreign service, which hadn’t been given for three years. I took it over in Germany. It was a two-and-a-half-day examination, and it was not too easy.
I was discharged from the army and came home. About six weeks later, I learned that I had passed the written part of the examination, which surprised me. And then, a few weeks later, I was asked to go to Chicago for an oral interview with a traveling board. I somehow passed that. Then I was told it would be at least two years before I was called into the foreign service. So I said, “All right, I would like to get a graduate degree anyhow, so I’ll go off to graduate school.”
I went to Harvard and was there about eight weeks when I suddenly got a telegram from Washington saying, “Report immediately for entry into the foreign service.” As you can imagine, I had to juggle a bit whether I was going to complete my studies or join the foreign service. I finally decided the foreign service was what I wanted. I went to Washington and entered into the class of July 30, 1946.
From then on, I spent 38 years in the foreign service. My first post was in Berlin, which was an exciting period there, because the city was half run by the Russians. And I was there for the blockade and the airlift and so forth.
After that, I had four years in London, which was also interesting, although not as dramatic as that of Berlin. Then it was around the world. I was next sent to Manila, where I was chief of the visa section and where I spent about a year and a half. Then I suddenly received what was called a direct transfer to Hong Kong to be chief of the even more important visa section there. Visas in Manila and Hong Kong were very, very sought after. We had lots of customers and lots of turn downs.
After that was completed in ’57, I was brought back to the State Department and was placed in what was called the Executive Secretariat, which was the office at that time that looked at all the papers that were going to the secretary of state and undersecretary to make sure they were all right and had been cleared where they should be and so forth.
After four years of that, I went to the National War College at Fort McNair in Washington as one of the State Department people there. We were about 20 out of a class of 130. I had one year there. It was probably the best year of my life in some ways. It was very good because what it did was allow us in the diplomatic business to understand what the military was up to and how they looked at problems – and they to understand us. In that regard, it was very good.
After that, I was assigned to Bonn, Germany, and went there for three years. Then I was summoned back to Washington to take charge of what was called the Junior Foreign Service Officers Program. This was very interesting, because 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. After that, I went to the Hague, in Holland, and worked at the embassy there for three years. Then I got a direct transfer to Copenhagen, where I was made a deputy chief of mission, which is number two to the ambassador. I was there three years. Since we didn’t have an ambassador, at least half that time I was in charge of the embassy for that period.
Then it was a transfer to Tel Aviv, Israel, where I was again deputy chief of mission. I spent several years there. Tel Aviv is an ongoing place, I must say, where there’s not much chance for Americans to relax. It’s a very tense place in some ways.
At the end of that, I came back to the States and was sent to Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, for one year as diplomat of residence. This allowed me to travel around Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, and Indiana to various colleges and to speak there, usually on behalf of the foreign service but also at times to talk about various collegiate subjects.
When that was over, I went back to the Hague again, this time as deputy chief of mission, and spent three years there.
I came back to the States in ’81, and, after a brief tour – I was on loan to the Central Intelligence Agency for almost a year – I was then put into the Organization of American States, which is our body that meets in the Pan-American Union. This brought me up to retirement in ’84. That’s a capsule of my service.
●
I went to Berlin for my first tour, and I was a bachelor at the time. I then came back to the States after three years on what was called home leave. I married a girl I’d been corresponding with and had known for some time, Rae Marie Fox, in August of ’49. She went back to Berlin with me. Our first son was born in Berlin. Then we had two sons born in London, a son born in Hong Kong, and a daughter who was born in Washington.
The children do not find foreign service always an easy life. It’s not an American atmosphere. We were lucky enough to find what was called American schools in most of the posts we had, but it’s a little more difficult than it is in this country for the children. When you’re moving around – I mentioned my various transfers from one place to another – children are uprooted and taken out from their friends, and they have to go to an entirely different atmosphere. That’s about it for family. They were a strength for me. My wife, Rae Marie, died in 1990, and that ended that career. I remarried in 1992 to a lady I’d met in Washington a year after Rae Marie died. We got married. Peg died in 2006. Now I’m a bachelor again.
I don’t think [being a father in the foreign service is] much different from being a father anywhere. You try to keep a rein on your children and you try to teach them the right things to do. Show them you love them. It isn’t so easy always, because they’re moving around and losing friends here and there. But I don’t think there’s that much difference really. Children are children anywhere. And fathers are fathers anywhere. I will say one thing: The higher you get in the foreign service, the less time you’re at home in the evenings with them. You’re often invited out and doing various things. You have a little less time with them than would normally be the case. That was quite evident. That’s just the way life was in the foreign service. I didn’t have any strong feelings for or against it. The children never said, “Oh, don’t go out.” But sometimes you wondered if they didn’t think that.
I talked to them about going to John Carroll, and one of them said, “No, Dad, that was your school.” He wanted to try another one. So he and his brother went to Xavier. They both did well and are both living now in the Cincinnati area. The fact that Carroll was my school – they wanted to be on their own. I can’t blame them for that.
●
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. I ended up as a buck sergeant and took my discharge when it came along in March of ’46. I was in what was called the replacement depot. I was a cadreman, as they called them. Our job was to get people ready to go to the front lines. We would get a batch of troops from the States, see that they had their shots, see that they had their canteens and everything they needed, and then ship them forward to the front line. We worked out of England for about five months, and then we transferred to France and spent about a year there. It wasn’t glamorous work.
My main job for the last year or so was what was called ration breakdown. I had two large trucks at my disposal, and a couple of Frenchmen, and a couple of drivers. We would drive up to what was called a railhead every day, and then we’d go to where the supply depot was. We’d bring supplies to the depot. And then we would break them down. I had four companies to supply with food. I would load that food in my trucks and take it back to them.
That was not the most exciting part of World War II, but somebody had to do it. I went where I was placed.
I thought for sure, because I was 1-A as they called it, that I would be tapped to go to the front as a replacement myself, but I never was. And I didn’t volunteer by saying, “Oh, send me. Send me.” I thought, they’ll do with me what they want.
●
[On the day Pearl Harbor was attacked,] I was at home in Cleveland Heights, studying for an exam at Carroll the next day. I was a junior and it was a language exam, probably in French. That afternoon, I got word from my sister, who was talking to somebody on the phone, about Pearl Harbor being bombed. The next day, of course, was the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Everything was topsy-turvy at Carroll, because no one knew what was going to happen.
We didn’t know if the draft would grab everybody suddenly. Whether it would take some of the instructors as well as the students. And also whether the Japanese were going to invade California at the time. For a couple of days, there was a great deal of mystery as to what was going to happen. Then Hitler foolishly declared war on us three days later, and things began to come into focus.
About a week or two after Pearl Harbor, the US Navy announced that they were going to put out what was called a V-7 program, which would allow students to stay in the last two classes of school, and, when they finished it, to go to naval training to become officers. I was the second one from Carroll who applied for that. And 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.”
About two months later, the army caught up and announced that they would have what was called the Enlisted Reserve Corps. That was for people who were juniors and seniors in college. They would sign up and then be permitted to finish their courses, which would be expedited. They would then be taken in. Now they didn’t say, as the navy had, that they would give you an officer’s commission. The army treats them differently. They look for leaders rather than people who have been to education training. So I signed up for that in, I think, August of ’42. We were going to school all that summer. They expedited us. We were taking senior courses, even though normally we would have had the summer off. But we were taking senior courses all that summer. That fall of ’42 was quite different, because there was no football, we didn’t have a yearbook, and it was all study and grind. In fact, that summer school, instead of meeting three times a week for various courses, we met every day, so that was a bit of a grind.
I think those of us who came in under the Enlisted Reserve Corps were a little miffed that we didn’t get a chance to go to officer training as you had in the navy. But the army picks its leaders in different ways. So that was it. And we came in a little late. If we’d come in in ’42, we probably would’ve been going to officer training. But by ’43, when we got in, they had all the officers they needed. At least I was told that.
●
We led a fairly comfortable life until the Depression hit. Then my father, who was an automobile salesman, lost his job. He would get other jobs, but they didn’t last long, because no one was buying new cars at the time. It was a difficult time. My mother, who had a teacher’s certificate, in ’37 went back to teaching when my youngest brother was able to handle things by himself. So that was the Depression. Finally, toward the end of the Depression, my father got a job at Apex Electric in the manufacturing sector. That seemed to help a good deal.
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. It was a very difficult time. It had an emotional impact. There’s no question about it.
●
John Carroll was a well-known school in Cleveland – a Jesuit university there. I was pleased to go there. Our class entered in September of ’39. That was the year the war started in Europe between Germany and Poland and Britain and France. 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. But even among a good many of the faculty, as well as the student body, there was a very strong feeling that this was not our war and we should stay away from it.
That didn’t change until Pearl Harbor. That had a great effect. Our first day at Carroll, we met outside. There were 250 of us freshmen. And I believe it was the president, Father Horne, who said we were the largest class John Carroll had ever had. I look at the classes today of 800 and 900 and I think we were a pretty puny class! We thought we were pretty big at 250. But of course there were no women then. And not everybody went to college. In fact, probably less than half did.
The professor I liked the most, and for whom I wrote my thesis, was Mr. [Donald] Gavin. He taught me a number of history courses. Among the Jesuits, I admired Father [Leonard] Otting and Father [Clifford] LeMay, and Father [Remi] Belleperche, who was somewhat controversial, but I thought a good teacher. He didn’t run a class quite the way most people would. He used the Socratic method of asking questions, and making you think about it. That was very good. I also liked Father Dennis Burns, who was there, too.
●
[Foreign service] was something I had never thought about when I was growing up. I remember when I was a freshman or sophomore at Carroll and I talked to one of the fellows in my class, who was much more knowledgeable about those things. How did one get into the foreign service? He said, “Oh, I think you have to go to Georgetown.” And since I wasn’t at Georgetown, I forgot that idea. Then I learned that, no, there was an examination you had to take.
●
It was the summer of 1945, just after the end of the war in Germany. I was sitting in my tent paging through the Stars and Stripes, and there was a little article saying the State Department was going to give the first foreign service examination since 1941 or ’42. It had been called off during the war. People in the armed forces were eligible to take this. I thought, “Gee, that’s good,” but you had to do a number of things. You had to get permission from your commanding officer. You had to send in a transcript of credits from your college. And so forth. I went to my first sergeant, who was a friend, and I asked him about it. He took it up with a commanding officer, and the commanding officer said he didn’t see any problem with that. OK. Then I wrote Carroll, and they were very good about that. Within a couple weeks, they sent off transcripts of my credits to where they were supposed to be sent. However, all that was taking place in the late summer of ’45. And then I got orders to transfer to Germany. I thought, “Oh, boy. Everything is going to be mixed up.” Well, I got to Germany. I had left my forwarding address and so forth.
It turned out I got a letter saying I was eligible to take the examination, because they had the approval of my commanding officer, and they also had my transcripted credits. So four of us got in the back of what was called a 2 by 3 – with canvas and open in the back – and went from lower Bavaria way down into the Alps, to Oberammergau, to where the exam was to be held. My commanding officer was also going to take the exam, but he rode in the front seat, of course. We got there and found out the exam was to be given inside a mountain, in a gigantic Messerschmitt plane assembly plant during the war, because there were 10,000 people there coming to take the exam, from the army all over Europe. It was late November. It was snowy and cold.
I knew Oberammergau was where the Passion story had taken place. I didn’t know much else about it. It’s a pretty mountain town.
When the exam was over, we went back and didn’t hear anything for months. It was about four months later when I heard, and I was already discharged from the army at that time. I had passed the written part. Then I had to get ready for the oral.
The more I learned about [the foreign service], the more I wanted it. I thought, “Golly, what an opportunity.” When I graduated from Carroll, I didn’t know what I wanted, except I knew I was going into the army. I did have a teacher’s certificate. But that wasn’t going to be of any use until the army was over.
I was going to graduate school at Harvard when my summons to the foreign service came. I was studying international relations. I won’t say I was enjoying it, but I found it very interesting. I was getting along pretty well, getting average B courses, which I thought was pretty good at Harvard. If I hadn’t gotten into the foreign service, I would’ve continued and at least gotten a master’s degree. Whether I would’ve gone on to get any more, I don’t know. With that, I could’ve gotten a teaching job almost anywhere in any secondary school. To teach in college, you pretty much have to have a doctor’s degree. But that never came to pass, and I was just as happy it didn’t.
●
Getting married in ’49 was a very happy moment. And again getting married in 1990 was a very happy moment.
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. Those are the things that are hard.
●
I should say that of all the posts I had, probably the most exciting was my first one, in Berlin. That was when the city was divided, with the Russians on one side and we, the British and French on the other. I got there in 1946 and left in 1950. The airlift began in ’48 and continued until ’49. At first, one was a little nervous, because being blockaded in a city 100 miles from freedom didn’t look too good. We weren’t quite sure how we could survive and how we could survive the winter. But we did, thank God to the US airlift, and also to the courage of the Germans, who just no, they weren’t going to give in to the Russians. Those were exciting days.
You pray. I was always able to get to Mass there. That helped a good deal. But I will admit you do get a little nervous at times. But you live one day to the next and hope it’ll be all right. And it was. The worst period came in November of 1948, when we had three weeks of fog and the planes couldn’t get into Berlin. That was very difficult. Finally the fog lifted. The planes began to come back. So we were spared any real problems.
It was wintertime. You didn’t know whether you were going to get any coal. Also, gasoline was almost nonexistent. Those diplomats, however, did get five gallons a month. But you can’t get very far on that. We didn’t suffer for food very much. Not nearly as much as the Germans. They got the basics – potatoes, vegetables, things like that. The army supplied us with things we needed. I wouldn’t say we suffered much. Remember, we were under army control there.
●
When you’re in your 20s, as I was then, you don’t worry about [the pressure of a foreign-service job]. Nowadays, I’d be worried a great deal. You have a much more optimistic outlook, perhaps, and you say “God will take care of us.” It can’t always be uplifting, though, because at times it does get a little difficult. I never suffered much. And I don’t think any of the Allies did there either. The Germans didn’t do too well, but they certainly got enough food and enough coal to get through the winter, and that was important. And then the Russians finally gave in – in May of ’49.
●
I met a lot of people in high places. In Germany, I met Chancellor Adenauer and Willy Brandt, who was the heroic mayor of Berlin. And Ernst Reuter, who was another very fine mayor of Berlin.
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.
As we left, and we were driving away – I was driving the ambassador to a plane, because he had to go to Paris – [the ambassador] said, “I never saw a man who could handle so much liquor. We had two sherries before lunch. We had champagne all during lunch, and then at the end he insisted on having some cognac.” And this is the middle of the day. That’s why, when I saw him, his face was pretty red.
I also had a chance to meet the King of England. He was there in ’52. And Queen Elizabeth. And his daughters came with him. Then I was at the coronation for Queen Elizabeth.
In the Netherlands, I met the queen. In Copenhagen, I met the queen. In Israel, I met a lot of people. Golda Meir. Moshe Dayan. They were pretty historical already when I met them. I met [Yitzhak] Rabin, the prime minister who was assassinated, and Shimon Peres, who is now the president of Israel.
●
In Bonn, Germany, in 1963, Mr. Dunnigan met President Kennedy through Ambassador George McGee.
McGee gave a very large luncheon for President Kennedy, so the president could meet a lot of German politicians. He invited a number of us from the embassy staff to help out there. I was invited. After the lunch, the president stood in the center of what was really a ballroom, and people were taken up and introduced to him – German officials and so forth. It was all laid on ahead of time that those of us embassy officers – there must’ve been eight or ten of us – would escort a man up there and introduce him to the president, and get out of there, because in about two minutes, somebody else would come up.
The president got talking with an official who was not really that important but was of interest to the president. So they kept talking and talking. I had standing next to me the chief of the social democrats in Germany, Erich Ollenhauer, probably the second most important politician in Western Germany. I was to take him up. But I wasn’t going to interrupt the president. But my ambassador came up behind me, and he began to push me. “Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead!” He was very much a nervous type that way. And I said, “Mr. Ambassador, the president is talking to that fellow and he’s very interested.” He said, “Go ahead! Don’t worry about that!” So I walked up about ten yards with Erich Ollenhauer and stood there. Kennedy became aware of my presence and looked around, without a very friendly feeling. He said, “Yes?” I said, “Mr. President, I wanted to introduce the head of the social democratic party.” He said [gruffly], “Thank you.” And I beat a hasty retreat. That was my introduction to President Kennedy.
●
I never got to China, because when I was in Hong Kong, we were forbidden to go to China. The nearest we could go was up to the border and look into China. But we couldn’t go there.
●
Mr. Dunnigan recounts experiences from his duties as visa chief in various posts.
Once, in Manila, a Philippine woman came to see me with a daughter – a really gorgeous girl who didn’t look Filipino at all. She said she’d like to have her daughter go to the States. I said, “That’s very good. What are the facts?” Well, it turns out the daughter’s father was an American soldier who’d been in the Philippines and had forgotten to marry her mother. I said, “Unfortunately, it makes her illegitimate, and according to our law, we can’t give you a visa.” Oh, she was very unhappy with that. I’ll never forget that.
There was another time, in Tel Aviv, where I was no longer in charge of the visa section. But I knew one of the girls who was, and she was handling a counter, like a bank counter. A Jewish applicant came up to the counter and said he’d like a visa because he was going to the States. She looked at his paperwork and said, “I’m sorry. You don’t qualify.” Whereupon, he began to climb over the counter, and he was going to hit her. I didn’t witness this. I was told about this. She screamed. The marine guard, who was 50 yards away, came running. Grabbed the fellow. They had to persuade the fellow that he was not going to get a visa. Since I was in charge, I was immediately told what had happened.
In Hong Kong, all of our visa interviews had to be carried out through an interpreter, since the people spoke a dialect of Cantonese, which was very difficult. In Hong Kong, you assumed that anyone who came in for a visa was a fraud. They were not what they said there were. They had to prove to you that they were. It was very, very difficult. My wife said to me, “Dear, I wish you were back doing visas. You always had the most interesting stories every night.” Which you didn’t have when you got into the other work.
You get hardened [to turning people down for visas]. You know what the law says. She either qualifies or doesn’t. Personally, you’d like to give her a visa. And I think that beautiful girl would’ve been an addition to the US. But, daddy has forgotten to marry mother. She just didn’t qualify. That would’ve been 1956.
●
In the foreign service, we have what’s called post reports. And they will tell you what life is like at the post. A post report for London will tell you about life there, or the post report for Kabul will tell you about life in Afghanistan. So you get the post report for the post you’re going to, and you have a little feel for how it’s going to be. Then, as so often happens in the foreign service, you’ll find somebody at your present post who has served at the other post. And they’ll say, “Oh, yes, don’t believe it. It’s this way and that way.” Word of mouth. That is helpful.
But there are times when you have to go in blind. You sink or swim.
The last post I had was deputy chief of mission at the Organization of American States. That’s concerned with Latin America. But I hadn’t served in Latin America. It was rather hard for me to try to catch up with the people who spoke absolutely fluent Spanish and Portuguese and so forth, and had spent 20 to 30 years in Latin America. That was probably as difficult as I had.
●
When I started [in the foreign service], I got in right at the end of World War II. The service, the older people, were very much the elite, who’d been to a few schools and who all knew each other. One of the first things that happened after the war was throwing the net wider and getting people from various schools – such as John Carroll – around the country. That was one thing that stood out. Another was that we had very few women. There may have been five or six women officers at the time, out of 3,000. Nowadays, something like 40 percent of the service is female.
The work hasn’t changed a great deal. It’s still diplomatic and consular work. You just have to get used to new changes. For instance, when I came in, we never worried about nuclear treaties and things of that nature. But they do now. And there have been so many new countries. There were 40 to 50 countries. Now there are 190. It’s greatly expanded.
●
We had to study geography in grade school. I’m not sure they do anymore. We had to find various places on the map. It certainly isn’t emphasized now, I’ll say that.
It’s always a danger when people don’t understand anything about their neighbors or those who want to do them harm. That is a danger. We’ve got to keep educating people in foreign affairs.
●
I can’t say I’ve known heroes. A hero would be a person who stands up for his rights when it’s not popular to do so, and takes chances when he himself can be badly hurt. I’m trying to think if I knew any heroes. I can’t say that I do. Not people that I would consider heroes.
●
I belong to DACOR, which is Diplomatic and Consular Officers Retired. We have an organization here in Washington, with speakers and so forth. I belong to another organization of Northern Virginia retirees. I’m very proud of it and very pleased.
As told to Ken Kesegich
|
