Contributions by Texans in the Foreign Service
People born, raised, or educated in Texas have made important contributions to America’s prosperity and security as members of the Foreign Service community. Here are some examples from ADST’s oral history collection:
- Born, raised, and educated in Texas, Victor Niemeyer joined the U.S. Navy in 1942. He was aboard a submarine in Tokyo Bay when the Japanese surrendered. After the war, he served more than 25 years with the United States Information Service across Latin America and the Pacific. During the 1973 Chilean coup, he helped students escape machine gun fire in Santiago, where he directed a binational cultural center. Victor Niemeyer’s full story can be found here.
- A child of depression-era Texas, Ruth McLendon joined the Foreign Service in 1951. During her posting in the Philippines as a Consular Officer, she was instrumental in the creation of a unit to investigate citizenship and visa fraud. Read more of her story on ADST’s website.
- James Hargrove was born in Louisiana, but grew up in Houston. During World War II, he was a U.S. Army interrogator and questioned Wehrmacht soldiers and Nazi Party officials during the occupation of Germany. As Ambassador to Australia, he was responsible for maintaining the ANZAC Treaty, a military alliance between the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand. His full ADST interview can be found here.
- Elizabeth Jones was born overseas in a Foreign Service family, but spent many childhood summers in her father’s hometown of Lubbock. She joined the Foreign Service herself in 1970. After three years as Ambassador to Kazakhstan where she forged American ties with Central Asia, Jones served as Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs at the State Department during 9/11 and the aftermath, rallying NATO allies to aid the United States in the war on terrorism. Read her complete oral history in three parts in the ADST collection: 1, 2, 3.
- Joseph Lake, a fourth generation Texan, entered the Foreign Service at the age of twenty. Before becoming America’s first resident Ambassador to Mongolia in 1990, he spent almost two decades in East Asia, West Africa, and the Balkans. In Mongolia, he led the establishment of the U.S. Embassy in Ulaanbaatar, advancing America’s ties with a country squeezed between Russia and China. Read his full oral history on the ADST website.
ADST also remembers those Texans in the Foreign Affairs community who made the ultimate sacrifice in service to America. Here are some recorded on the American Foreign Service Association’s Memorial Plaque:
- Born in Houston, Everett Dixie Reese served as director of the USAID photo service. He died on April 29, 1955, when his plane was shot down over Binh Xuyen in Vietnam.
- Hugh C. Lobit was born in Houston and served with USAID as assistant provincial representative in Vinh Long, Vietnam. On February 9, 1968, he was shot and killed by a sniper while escorting a U.S. news correspondent.
- Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth G. Crabtree was from Fort Worth. He was serving as a military advisor in a U.S. mission monitoring the disengagement of armed forces along the Namibia-Angola border when he was killed in a bomb explosion on April 15, 1984.