Contributions by Oklahomans in the Foreign Service

After growing up in Pauls Valley, John H. Burns entered the Foreign Service in 1941. As a member of the State Department’s Inspection Corps in 1952-54, he spoke against McCarthyism-inspired loyalty investigations against Foreign Service employees he knew. He went on to serve as Ambassador to Tanzania and the Central African Republic and Director General of the Foreign Service. Read his oral history on ADST’s website.

Walter M. McClelland was born and raised in Oklahoma City and joined the Foreign Service in 1950. As an economic officer in Baghdad, McClelland helped American companies expelled from Iraq attempt to collect monetary claims. He helped evacuate the Embassy when Iraq broke relations with the United States during the 1967 Six-Day War and arranged for Belgium to act as our protecting power. Read more about McClelland here.

Born in Sapulpa, Elizabeth J. Harper served in the Wormen’s Army Corps in the Pacific in World War II, went to Japan as a civilian employee of occupation forces after the war, and joined the Foreign Service as a consular officer in 1951. As deputy assistant secretary for visa services in 1979, she advised the Carter administration on options for tightening visa restrictions on Iranians in response to the taking of hostages at the American Embassy in Tehran. Harper’s full oral history is on ADST’s website.

Born in a small Oklahoma town, James E. Taylor joined the Foreign Service in 1965. As a political officer in Kabul, he reported back to the State Department on Afghanistan’s 1978 leftist military coup, desperately negotiated with the new government in an attempt to prevent the assault on a hotel that would kill Ambassador Spike Dubs, and informed Washington of the Soviet invasion in 1979. His full story is on ADST’s website.

Hailing from a family of Oklahomans, E. Wayne Merry was born and raised in Tulsa and entered the Foreign Service in 1972. As chief of the internal politics unit in Moscow in the early 1990s, his analysis was critical to informing U.S. policy toward the attempted overthrow of Gorbachev in 1991 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Find his full story on ADST’s website.

Born to a working-class family in rural Oklahoma and a first-generation graduate of the University of Oklahoma, Jenonne Walker entered foreign affairs as a CIA analyst and became a civil servant at the State Department in the mid-1970s. After helping negotiate arms control treaties with the Soviets and serving as senior director for Europe on the National Security Council, she was named Ambassador to the Czech Republic in 1995, fostering the country’s return to democracy and helping the government and American companies battle corruption. Read her story in ADST’s collection.

Mary “Ann” Wright was born in Durant and served in the military before joining the Foreign Service in 1987. She received the State Department’s Award for Heroism for leading the evacuation of 1,400 American citizens and our partners from Sierra Leone in 1997. She resigned in protest over the U.S. administration’s policies regarding Iraq in 2003. Her oral history is part of ADST’s collection.