Contributions by Ohioans in the Foreign Service

After attending the College of Wooster, Kingsley W. Hamilton entered the Foreign Service in 1937. During the early 40s, He was serving as a consular officer in Saigon when the Japanese blew up the consulate building in November 1941, two weeks before Pearl Harbor. Hamilton was detained by the Japanese for six months. Read about his experience in ADST’s collection.

After attending Ohio State University, August Velletri entered the Foreign Service in 1949. While posted in Rome, he helped coordinate the evacuation of American citizens from the Middle East during the Suez Crisis in 1956. Read the rest of Velletri’s oral history on the ADST website.

Thomas D. Boyatt was born and raised in Cincinnati and entered the Foreign Service in 1960. Early in his career, Boyatt was on a TWA flight hijacked by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and forced to land in Syria. He assumed the role of protecting American citizens on the flight even while a captive himself. He helped save the life of a woman injured during the hijacking and eventually negotiated the release of American hostages. He went on to serve as Ambassador to the Republic of Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) and Colombia. His full oral history is on ADST’s website.

Born in Cleveland and raised in small towns across Ohio, Peter Tomsen served in Nepal in the Peace Corps and then entered the Foreign Service in 1967. After serving on a Provincial Advisory Team in Ben Tranh, Vietnam, in 1969, he returned to assist with the frantic evacuation of American citizens and our Vietnamese partners from Saigon in 1975, including driving high-risk refugees to safe houses to avoid Viet Cong informants. He went on to serve as Ambassador to Armenia and Special Envoy to Afghanistan. His full oral history is in two parts (I and II) on ADST’s website.

Mort Dworken grew up in Cleveland and entered the Foreign Service in 1968. During the Vietnam War, he served on a Provincial Advisory Team promoting rural development in Phuoc Long and later in Laos advised the Ambassador on requests for U.S. airstrikes, ensuring rules of engagement were respected. He later helped negotiate military basing agreements with Turkey. His full story is on ADST’s website.

The Foreign Service took Arlene Render from a segregated neighborhood in Cleveland to three ambassadorships and a lifetime of diplomatic achievements. After joining the State Department as one of the few Black officers in 1970, she went on to resolve a messy espionage affair in Ghana and oversee the safe evacuation of American citizens from Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. Render served as Ambassador to the Gambia, Zambia, and Cote d’Ivoire. Read her full oral history in ADST’s collection.

After growing up in Philo, Ohio, Shirley Ruedy supported her U.S. Information Agency husband through tours in Iran and Germany before joining the Foreign Service herself in 1987. While assigned to our embassy in Bonn, she assisted in the “Two Plus Four” talks that led to the reunification of East and West Germany. Her full story is available in ADST’s collection.

Born in Columbus, Brian Daniel Adkins was a consular officer in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he was stabbed to death in his home on January 31, 2009.

Edward J. Seitz was born in Parma and served as a police officer in Cleveland Heights before joining the Foreign Service as a diplomatic security agent. Seitz was serving as assistant regional security officer to the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, when he was killed in a mortar attack on Camp Victory on October 24, 2004.

Gary C. Durell of Alliance served in the Air Force before joining the National Security Agency and the Department of State. Durell was serving as a signals intelligence intercept operator at the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, in March 1995, when he and another American were killed by gunmen who fired into their van.