Contributions by Utahns in the Foreign Service

Ogden native Earl Packer joined the civil service in 1915 and arrived at the U.S. Embassy in Petrograd (St. Petersburg) in 1917 as a member of the American Military Mission to Russia. Packer and his colleagues were working to keep Russia engaged in World War I as the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution erupted around them. Packer returned to the region in 1922 as part of the U.S. diplomatic presence in Latvia and Estonia, updating Washington on Russian moves to create the Soviet Union. Read his full ADST oral history.

Provo native and Brigham Young graduate Esther Peterson was working for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union when her husband Oliver joined the Foreign Service in 1948 and they were posted to Stockholm. While Oliver served as one of the first labor attachés in Sweden, Esther studied the conditions of employment for domestic workers for the Department of Labor, lobbied for equal pay for women, and supported women labor leaders. A celebrated advocate for women’s rights and consumer protection, Esther later headed the Women’s Bureau in the Department of Labor and ran the President’s Commission on the Status of Women. Learn more details in her complete ADST oral history.

After joining the Department of State in 1953, University of Utah graduate Elizabeth Hopkins helped integrate an existing Binational Center program – a network of spaces in Latin America dedicated to English language training and cross-cultural communication – into the State Department. The program attracted talented scholars with knowledge of foreign language and culture to careers in the Foreign Service. Find her story in ADST’s collection.

Born in Salt Lake City, Erland Heginbotham joined the Foreign Service in 1955. As Economic Officer/Commercial Counselor at the U.S. mission in Jakarta in the 1970s, he successfully navigated the dangers of a substantial loan default between the Indonesian oil monopoly and an American bank, avoiding what could have been a destabilizing international incident. Learn more about his adventures in ADST’s collection.

Born and raised in Salina in Sevier County, Roger A. Sorenson attended Brigham Young University and joined the Foreign Service in 1960. Sorenson managed the diplomatic aspects of American trade policy during the OPEC crisis of the 1970s. His efforts helped prevent an international default by two major European countries. Learn more in his full oral history.

Charles William Maynes attended high school in Salt Lake City and entered the Foreign Service in 1962. In his first assignment with the State Department’s Bureau for International Organizations, he proposed a new “assurances” provision for negotiations of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, removing a key impediment to U.S. ratification and allowing this centerpiece of international efforts to curb the spread of nuclear weapons to come into force. He went on to serve as Assistant Secretary in the same bureau fifteen years later and worked to pursue a Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. His full story is in the ADST collection.

Born in Cedar City and raised in New Harmony and Ogden, Vance C. Pace joined the United States Information Agency in 1964. As USIA executive officer in Lima in the 1970s, Pace oversaw a network of Binational Centers across Peru that taught English language and shared American culture. Learn more details by reading Pace’s full story.

Former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman Jr. served as Ambassador to Russia, China, and Singapore during his years of diplomatic service spanning three decades. In addition to his ambassadorial roles, he also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs in the early 1990s, chairing a U.S.-China committee that advanced trade deals and solved market access and intellectual property problems for U.S. businesses. His ADST oral history covers his early foreign policy work up through his ambassadorial tenure in Singapore.