Contributions by Oregonians in the Foreign Service

Born in Clatskanie and raised in rural Oregon, Ernestine S. Heck graduated from Oregon State University. After joining the State Department as a secretary in 1963, she became a Foreign Service Officer in 1968. As Consul General in Madras, India, she fought for market access for U.S. companies, overseeing a dramatic increase in American business activity. Learn more in her ADST oral history.

Born and raised in the Willamette Valley and southern Oregon, David L. Mack joined the Foreign Service in 1965. As a young consular officer in Amman, Mack had a very close view of the 1967 Six-Day War between Israel and Jordan, Egypt, and Syria. As Israeli jets flew bombing raids overhead, Mack coordinated temporary shelter for American citizens preparing for evacuation and ensured they boarded Red Cross flights out of the country. His full oral history is in ADST’s collection.

Born in Eugene, raised next door in Springfield, and educated at the University of Oregon, Victor L. Tomseth entered the Foreign Service in 1966. Stationed in Shiraz, Iran, in the late 1970s, Tomseth sensed the rumblings of revolution and began quietly convincing Americans to leave the country, saving several thousand U.S. citizens from the coming anti-American violence. Tomseth himself would be held captive at the Iranian Foreign Ministry for 444 days, but managed to help save five of his colleagues. Allowed to make occasional phone calls by Foreign Ministry staff, he passed instructions in Thai to a cook who worked in the diplomatic community to temporarily shelter five Americans and then secretly transport them to refuge with Canadian diplomats – a story dramatized in the movie Argo. Tomseth would go on to serve as Ambassador to Laos. Learn more in his full oral history.

Virginia Carson Young attended high school in Oregon and studied at Oregon State College. She supported her husband’s Foreign Service career for several tours, then entered the Service herself in 1977. As a consular officer in Bucharest during Romania’s revolution, she located American citizens to ensure their safety and reunified American families with relatives who were finally allowed to leave Romania after years of travel restrictions under Romania’s dictatorship. Learn more in her ADST oral history.

Born and raised in Portland, Alan “Punch” Green Jr. entered the foreign affairs community through politics. After military service in the Pacific during World War II, he became a successful businessman active in politics. He served as chair of the Portland Port Commission and the Federal Maritime Commission and was then appointed Ambassador to Romania just before the overthrow of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. During Romania’s revolution, Green ensured the evacuation of Americans and sheltered British diplomats in the U.S. Embassy compound. Green personally helped more than 1,000 Romanians, convicted under the Ceausescu regime for pro-American attitudes, to immigrate to the United States. Learn more in his ADST oral history.

Micheal Pistor was born in Portland and joined the U.S. Information Agency in 1959. He rose through the ranks to become Ambassador to Malawi, where he promoted American values of democracy, equality, and human rights in the midst of Hastings Banda’s 30-year dictatorship. Working with colleagues in Lilongwe’s diplomatic community, Pistor successfully pushed for democratic elections and a multiparty system that peacefully ended the dictator’s reign in 1994. Read Pistor’s full story in ADST’s collection.

Tyrone Snowden Woods was born in Imperial Beach and joined the Navy SEALS after graduating high school. After distinguished service in Iraq, he left the military to become a CIA contract protective officer. Woods, Ambassador Chris Stevens, and two other Americans were killed in the September 11, 2012 terrorist attacks on the U.S. diplomatic annex in Benghazi.