Contributions by Washingtonians to the Foreign Service

People born, raised, or educated in the state of Washington have made important contributions to America’s prosperity and security as members of the Foreign Service community. Here are a few examples from ADST’s oral history collection:

• Joseph Walter Neubert grew up in Bothell, attended the University of Washington, and entered the Foreign Service in 1947. In Belgrade, he helped Yugoslavs with ties to America sort out their claims to U.S. citizenship and interpreted requests from the new Tito-led government for protection from the Soviet Union. Read more in his memoir in ADST’s collection.

• Born in Seattle and a graduate of the University of Washington, Stuart Lillico joined the U.S. Information Agency in 1953. In 1960, he became the public affairs officer in the new U.S. Consulate in Zanzibar, where NASA had just opened a tracking station for the Mercury Project. During the 1964 Revolution, he helped evacuate Project Mercury personnel and other American citizens from the island. Learn more in his full ADST oral history.

• Darryl Norman Johnson grew up in Seattle, graduated from the University of Washington, and joined the Foreign Service in 1965 after serving with the Peace Corps in Thailand. As political counselor in Beijing, he laid the groundwork for the eventual introduction of Peace Corps Volunteers into China to teach English and build international understanding. Johnson also served as U.S. Ambassador to Thailand and was the first U.S. Ambassador to Lithuania after it left the Soviet Union. For more on his work, read his full ADST oral history.

• Born in Tacoma, raised in Gig Harbor, and a graduate of the University of Puget Sound, Janet Bogue joined the Foreign Service in 1982. As chief of the Political, Economic and Science Section in Kazakhstan in the 1990s, she helped organize Operation Sapphire, a secret mission to remove 500 kilograms of highly enriched uranium from the newly independent nation and prevent the material from falling into the hands of terrorists. Learn more in her full ADST oral history.

• Marcelle Wahba immigrated from Egypt as a child and eventually settled in Pullman and then Seattle. After joining the Foreign Service in 1986 as a member of the U.S. Information Agency, she became the spokesperson for the U.S. Embassy in Cairo. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, she became involved in the Kuwaiti government-in-exile’s efforts to tell the story of the invasion to the world, helping to build the global coalition against Saddam Hussein.  She went on to serve as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates. Read more of her story in ADST’s collection.

ADST also remembers those Washingtonians 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 Spokane, Joseph Robert Rupley served as associate director of the Peace Corps in Venezuela. On February 19, 1965, he was mistaken for a rebel, shot and killed by Caracas Police while driving through an area in the midst of civil unrest.

• Leslianne Shedd grew up in Puyallup and attended the University of Washington. She was serving as a CIA operations officer under diplomatic cover in Ethiopia when she and 122 other people were killed when drunken hijackers forced their aircraft to fly until it ran out of fuel and crashed on November 24, 1966.

• Born in Tacoma, Norman L. Clowers served as public safety advisor for U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in South Vietnam. In 1966, he was killed in a Viet Cong ambush after delivering building materials to a small village near his post.

• Don M. Sjostrom was born in Bothell and graduated from the University of Washington. He was working as a USAID operations officer in Laos helping refugees fleeing communist forces when he was killed in fighting in Nakhang in January 1967.