Contributions by Vermonters in the Foreign Service

Born in Bennington and a graduate of Middlebury, Eleannore Cobb Lee married Foreign Service Officer Armistead M. Lee in 1942 and helped him represent America on assignments from Senegal to New Zealand. When they worked in Washington, DC, she and her husband lived under the shadow of false accusations of communist ties during the paranoid political environment of the McCarthy era. Lee would go on to establish the American School for embassy children in Reykjavik. Read Lee’s full account in ADST’s collection.

With roots in Pittsford and a degree from the University of Vermont, Stephen Belcher served in the U.S. Army in World War II before joining what would become the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) in the early 1950s. He served in Cairo during the Suez Crisis of 1956, and when he wasn’t manning a radio on top of the Embassy to pass warnings about incoming British bombing runs, he was distributing books on the Eisenhower Plan for a peaceful solution to the war. Belcher’s full oral history is in ADST’s collection.

Abraham Sirkin was born and raised in Barre and served in the Army in the Pacific in World War II. After giving press tours of Hiroshima during the U.S. occupation of Japan, he moved to London to work on press for the Marshall Plan and became an officer with USIA. As public affairs officer in Athens at the time of Greece’s military junta, he confronted false allegations that the United States had supported the 1967 coup and maintained contact with opposition figures who helped inform the embassy’s reporting to Washington. Learn more in Sirkin’s ADST oral history.

Born and raised in Hyde Park in Lamoille County, Richard N. Viets attended the University of Vermont and entered the Foreign Service in 1955. As political-economic officer in New Delhi in 1971, he repeatedly warned Washington of the impending Indo-Pakistani War, helping to reshape the outlook of American officials who were reluctant to acknowledge the significance of rising tensions in the region. Viets later served as U.S. Ambassador to Tanzania and to Jordan. Find out more in his ADST oral history.

Emerson Melaven was born and raised on a dairy farm in Milton and began working for the U.S. Agency for International Development in 1960. As Mission Director in Burkina Faso from 1980 to 1985, he oversaw programs to dig wells for local communities and build roads to foster rural development and get agricultural products to market. Read Emerson’s full oral history.

A graduate of St. Michael’s College in Burlington, Michael M. Mahoney entered the Foreign Service in 1970 as a consular officer. In 1988, as chief of the American Citizen Emergency Services office of the State Department, Mahoney conducted death notifications and arranged for handling of the effects of the victims of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie. Find out more in his full oral history.

A graduate of Middlebury College, Marshall P. Adair entered the Foreign Service in 1972. Adair was Consul General in Chengdu in western China in the months after the Tiananmen Square massacre and confronted the lingering tensions and anti-American attitudes of government officials. Adair’s full oral history is in ADST’s collection.

After attending the University of Vermont, Roberta Cohen became a noted human rights advocate who helped press to make human rights an American foreign policy issue. She entered the State Department in 1978 as a senior adviser in the newly formed Bureau of Human Rights, playing a central role in addressing thousands of disappearances by the government of Argentina in what became known as the “Dirty War.” Her work led to the formation of the United Nations Human Rights Commission’s Working Group on Disappearances. Learn more in her full ADST oral history.