Creagan, James
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The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project AMBASSADOR JAMES F. CREAGAN Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: May 2, 2013 Copyright 2016 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Background 1940-1965 Life in Lorain, Ohio University of Notre Dame Graduate School at UVA San Antonio, Texas 1965-1966 Professor at St. Mary’s University Met & Married Gwyn Jonsson Foreign Service Class 1966-1967 Assignment to Harvard Business School Mexico City, Mexico 1997-1969 Assistant Labor Attaché Tlatelolco & Olympics San Salvador, El Salvador 1969-1970 Labor Attaché/Political Officer War with Honduras AID/Labor Officer College Station, Texas 1970-1971 LWOP Professor at Texas A&M University Illich Institute, Cuernavaca, Mexico Washington, DC/Rome, Italy 1971-1974 Assistant Labor Attaché Trade Union Ideology Acting Labor Attaché Lima, Peru 1974-1977 Political/Labor Officer 1 Peruvian Way to Socialism Military Tensions Intra-Embassy Activity Civilians vs Military Naples, Italy 1977-1980 Consul for Political/Economic/Commercial Christian Democrats & Communists Red Brigades The Camorra US Navy and Naples Department of State, Washington, DC 1980-1982 Italian & Vatican Desk Officer Creating US Embassy Vatican Secretary Haig and White House State Visits/Close Relations Lisbon, Portugal 1982-1986 Political Counselor Old Terrorism New Embassy Lajes Base Agreement Portuguese Diplomacy Presidential Visits Brasilia, Brazil 1986-1988 Political Counselor Diplomatic Life in the New city Transition from Military Rule New Constitution Drugs Holy See, Vatican City (Italy) 1988-1990 Deputy Chief of Mission The Pope and the Collapse of USSR Central America & Issues Mediation of Mozambique Civil War Presidential & Other Visits Noriega Case Sao Paulo, Brazil 1991-1992 Consul General Gulf War I American Chamber 2 Brazil Politics & Lula Vice Presidential & CODEL Visits New York, USA 1992 USUN Senior Advisor for Latin America Rome, Italy 1993-1996 Chargé & Deputy Chief of Mission Somalia New Ambassador for New President Embassy Management Dealing with Berlusconi & Others Cooperation with Italy on Third Countries Bosnia Presidential Visits Tegucigalpa, Honduras 1996-1999 Ambassador Economic & AID Issues Hurricane Mitch US Effort to Save Lives & Future Interagency & NGO Cooperation US Military Role Presidential Visits Retirement Rome, Italy 1999-2005 University President Running a US/Italian Institution Work with Three US Embassies in Rome San Antonio, Texas, USA 2006-2016 Professor at the University of the Incarnate Word Professor at St. Mary’s University “Represent” US Foreign Service in Community Work La Paz, Bolivia 2009 Chief of Mission/ Chargé Back on duty Leading Embassy after Ambassador PNG & DEA Expelled Evo Morales & Team INTERVIEW 3 Q: Okay, today is the 2nd of May 2013 with James F. Creagan, C-R-E-A-G-A-N. What does the F stand for Jim? CREAGAN: Francis Q: Francis. This is being done on behalf of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training and I am Charles Stuart Kennedy. Jim and I are old friends having served together in Naples back in the late ‘70s early ‘80s. Well Jim let’s start at the beginning when and where were you born? CREAGAN: I don’t remember, but it is great being here with you Stu. I was born in Elyria, Ohio, and raised in Lorain, Ohio. So the first 18 years of my life were lived in Lorain, Ohio, i.e. Steel Town, U.S.A. It’s on Lake Erie, west of Cleveland. The local Lorain High School song had lyrics that went something like, ‘On the shores of old Lake Erie, where the coal and iron meet.’ That is because we had coal coming by rail from the Pennsylvania coal yards, and the iron ore coming down by the big ore boats from Minnesota thru the Great Lakes to our massive steel mills. Q: Let’s take it first on your father’s side. Where did the Creagans come from what do you know about them? CREAGAN: Creagans were “lace curtain” Irish or so they say – meaning that they came over before they had to and before the great famine of the 1840s. They came thru New York. Some of them became indentured servants to fine families up the Hudson River and some then made their way West to Southern Michigan. Michigan had just become a state not too many years prior and was good open territory good for farming. Q: Do you happen to know where the Creagans came from in Ireland? CREAGAN: They sailed out of Cork, so we think, and there is a James Creagan whom I called when I was over there a few years ago in Limerick; so it is that Limerick area, South Western Ireland. Then they sailed from there and then, as I say, became farmers in Southern Michigan. There are still Creagans in places like Decatur, Michigan and a cousin, another James Creagan, runs the bank there. That’s the one side of the family. On my Grandmother’s side, the name was Denise, it was the same area of southern Michigan. Towns like Paw Paw. One of my uncles and Dad’s cousin, Malcolm Denise, later became Vice President of Ford for Labor relations. He was the person who negotiated with the autoworkers union (UAW) and Walter Reuther. My granddad, one of 14 children, became a pharmacist and moved to Grand Rapids where my Dad was born in 1911. He grew up in Grand Rapids. He went to school there and a fellow schoolmate was Gerald Ford, later congressman from Grand Rapids and US President. I remember talking with President Ford about his growing up in GR. Football was important, and while we were sitting in the Raphael rooms of the Vatican in the late 1980’s, we discussed playing football and our respective knee injuries and all that. Both Dad and Ford went off to the University of Michigan. My dad was a 1933 honors graduate in Mechanical and Electrical engineering. It was the depth of the Depression, but Dad got a job at US Steel 4 in Lorain, Ohio. He noted that when he arrived in Lorain he had 50 cents or so left to his name; so he walked the five miles from bus station to plant to report to work at the Mill. One reason I always say the mill is because it was central to life in Lorain. It had up to 15 thousand workers, and we always said it was the largest pipe mill in the free world – meaning I guess that there was a bigger one in the USSR. So that’s the Creagan side. Farm to city. Depression to World War II. Q: And on your mother’s side? CREAGAN: Then on my mother’s side the family proudly was from Alsace Lorraine. That land had bounced back and forth from France to Germany. Mom was proud of speaking French. She was very artistic and she had gone to Oberlin College and acted in theater. She graduated from Marygrove College in Michigan. Her family name was Traxler, and on the mom’s side it was Jungbluth or “Youngblood” as seemed to be preferred in the Lorain of the 1940s. Lorain was a steel town but the area was farm country and the Jungbluths had a good farm. Uncle Barney would come around every week to deliver milk from the farm. Grandma and he would speak German. Jungbluth is very German. Traxler can be German but works across cultures. I knew an Italian Ambassador, Vieri Traxler; so the name is widespread in Europe. But now that I look back at the 1940s, I would guess the family minimized their German heritage. Q: Well also people particularly in the United States picked up the French side of Alsace Lorraine when it became more politically acceptable than the German side of it. CREAGAN: Yes, of course, as I think back the town I grew up in for 18 years was called Lorain for a reason, obviously from Lorraine. Q: Yes. CREAGAN: So that is the settlement of that place, the place I grew up in. Q: Alright your father was in management I take it? CREAGAN: He was management, yes. Q: What was it like growing up as a kid in Lorain? I’m talking about as really young kids? CREAGAN: Yes. Well it was really ethnic. That is how I remember it. Management, labor, doctors and lawyers all grew up more or less in town just blocks apart. This was in the years before suburbs. My dad had a car, a 1940 Ford. Now they didn’t build cars during the war but he – Dad – had a 40 Ford. Many of the neighbors’ dads, even after the War, didn’t have cars. They got on the bus, the bus took them to the steel mill, they worked their shifts and they came home. You could walk most places. 5 I remember hearing on the radio the announcement that Franklin Roosevelt had died. I remember running up and down the block telling Randy Miller and Billy Banning and everybody else that Roosevelt was dead. We were little kids but sure knew it was important. In that period – I am talking about the 1940s – the town was very ethnic. I am sure it was the mill that drew the immigrants. We had the Slovaks, the Slovenians, the Polish, the Italians, Serbians, Croatians, etc. Now most everybody that I remember was Catholic, but son-of-a-gun if they didn’t have their own church. So you had the Italian Church and then a block away the Slovak Church and a block away the Polish Church and so forth; they all had what they would call the homes, or clubs.