The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project HAVEN N. WEBB Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: September 16, 2002 Copyright 2007 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Background Born and raised in Tennessee US Naval Academy avy assignments" Pensacola, FL" Newfoundland 1954-1957 ,arriage ,ilitari-ed Lockheed .onstellation aircraft orth Atlantic flights Entered the State Department Foreign Service 1901 State Dept. representative to 2illiamsburg meeting State Department" FSI" Spanish language training 1901-1902 6uadalajara, ,e7ico" .onsular Officer 1902-1904 Environment Staff Protection and welfare cases American retirees 8isas Local political realities State Department9 FSI" 6erman language training 1904 Hamburg, 6ermany" .onsular Officer 1904-1900 8isas and citi-enship cases 6erman economy Environment 6erman cultural habits State Department" FSI" Finnish language training 1900-1907 0 Helsinki, Finland" .hief, .onsular Section 1907-1909 Environment Finn-Russian relations .iti-enship cases Russian visas Soviet .-ech invasion The Finns Finnish-American Society The sauna State Department" I R" 2estern Europe morning briefer 1909-1971 Briefing technique 2orking environment 8ietnam and Doctor Spock Sweden State Department" Political/,ilitary Officer, ARA 1971-1973 Personnel issues Supply of weaponry to Latin America ,ilitary aircraft Latin countries> arsenal Soviet Union weapons supply Booklets re Status of foreign .ommunist Parties Foreign competition in weapon supply Human Rights Panama .ity, Panama" Political Officer 1973-1977 .anal Zone workers .omments on bureaucracy Environment .anal operations State Department" International Organi-ations Bureau" 1977-1978 Telecommunications and Transportation International Telecommunications Union Universal Postal Union 2orking environment Universal Postal Union meetings Personnel problems Tromso, Norway" Officer in .harge 1978-1981 Environment Information Office Travel ,ilitary installations 1 Relations with Oslo Embassy Reporting Local media US hostility US- orway relations Organi-ation of American States" Personal Assistant to the 1981-1982 US Ambassador Ambassador ,iddendorf Environment Falkland invasion Retirement 1982 Prince 6eorge>s .ommunity .ollege Lectures9 20th .entury 2orld History INTERVIEW B ote9 this interview was not edited by ,r. 2ebbC Q: Today is September 16, 2002. This is an interview with Haven N. Webb. I am Charles Stuart Kennedy, and this is being done on behalf of Association for Diplomatic Studies. You go by Haven don+t you, 2EBB9 Des. Q: Haven, to let people -now sort of who you are and where you are coming from, let+s sort of go bac-. Could you tell me when and where you were born and a bit about your family, 2EBB9 Des, I was born in ,emphis, Tennessee on, believe it or not, .hristmas Day 1932. ,y middle name meant .hristmas, Noel. I thought I was born in a southern family frankly, although it turns out that a number of my relatives were actually Dankees. ,y mother>s family were ministers from 6erald, Indiana that came south in the .ivil 2ar. I think my great grandfather was the only one who didn>t go back. ,y father>s grandfather who was the president of ,ississippi .ollege which I think was possibly the first college in the state of ,ississippi and actually a major school. It is really a university now. I certainly thought he was a good southern gentleman. It turned out he was from upstate ew Dork and was the first member of the family to marry a lady from Boston, as I did. ,y grandmother>s folks were from somewhere in middle Tennessee. ,y great grandfather who died on 8E night in 1945, actually barely remembered Dankee troops bivouacking on their farms southeast of Nashville. They were the last members of the farming community that I ever knew. Like most Americans, if you go far back enough in this country you will find a farmer. 2 Q: Tennessee has been in the middle of things. In the Civil War, it was not .uite in and not .uite out of the Confederacy or the /nion. How did the family align at that time, Were you brought up sort of in the southern tradition would you say, 2EBB9 No, absolutely opposite of ,argaret ,itchell. I grew up with no family comment about the .ivil 2ar, virtually no knowledge. The family was not interested in genealogy, although I have friends that are always trying to bribe me to get interested in it. I don>t really know. ,y people were really very apolitical to a very considerable degree, you know. .ertainly my parents who I suppose you would call lower middle class in any town, they were derived from people of larger e7pectations. They always voted the straight Democratic ticket. ,y father had never understood this, and I never asked him about it, but in ,emphis which Eohn 6unther wrote his series of Inside USA and all of that stuff, claimed that ,emphis had the only big city boss, DH .rump who actually in many ways was beneficial. The one time he was up on corruption charges, after the most intense study of all the financial books of the city, they finally concluded as best I remember they owed ,r. .rump about 95 cents or something. ,y father told a story once when for some obscure reason he was mad at ,r. .rump, that he went into his secret booth and voted the opposition, whatever that was. 2hen he came out one of the .rump officers looked at him and said, FDou ought to be ashamed.G But nothing ever happened, and he kept his old job at the best bank in town which meant since, as he always told it, during the depression, the bottom of the depression when I was born, the bank cut salaries ten percent, but the cost of living dropped 50H. So until 22I and inflation got a hold of us, we were living very well during the depression. Q: Well now in the family, your father was a ban-er. What was your mother+s bac-ground, 2EBB9 ,y mother was born on the farm. For some reason, I am not quite sure why, 6randma was living there at that time. She was a fairly young woman of 25 at the time. I think my grandmother moved back with her husband to Terre Haute. The story that we heard was that living in Dankee land reduced her to constant weeping, and so they returned, actually went to Nashville. 6randfather worked for an uncle somebody in the pharmacy business. He later moved to ,emphis where my mother was born almost in the same months as FDR in 1882. He was able to get a job in a pharmacy business. He died of a heart attack in 1933, ten months after I was born. It was in the depth of the depression. ,y grandmother, believe it or not, had a si7 year old daughter, her last pregnancy, which she was so ashamed about and came when she was 45. She absolutely refused to attend my parents> wedding eight months pregnant, so they had to move the wedding up to Euly, the absolute 6odawfullest month in ,emphis as anybody knows who has ever been there. One of her brothers lived in Tulsa, and he would come to town when it was 85 degrees at Union Station at night or something. He got off the train and said, F2hen I left Oklahoma it was 115, and I get off the train and you say it is 85. It is twice as hot here.G They didn>t have the humidity, and we had it in spades. 3 Q: Did your mother go to college or university or have any college, 2EBB9 ,y mother, oddly enough, went to a brand new high school called Southside where one of her classmates was a 14 year old kid who ended up on the Supreme .ourt, Abe Fortas. He was the genius of the local community. She went to, I think it was called, 2est Tennessee Teacher>s .ollege. I guess just for two years. She was only 19 when she got married. That became ,emphis State University which I think now is pretentiously called the University of ,emphis. Q: How about your father, Did he go to college, 2EBB9 His grandfather as I said was the president of ,ississippi .ollege. One of his daughters married a professor of Latin who became really a president. They produced two sons, one of whom became, I think his name was either ,urray Latimer, or 2ebb ,urray Latimer. Apparently he was always called 2ebb in the family. The old boy went to the University of .hicago and places like that and got e7cellent degrees in classical 6reek and all of that sort of thing. ,urray ended up as one of FDR>s original brain trust. He was often called, so I am told, the father of social security. I believe there is a federal building named for him in Baltimore. Another son ended up at 6eorge 2ashington where he was a teacher and a professor and assistant dean or I don>t know what. But my father>s father was a medical doctor. I don>t think medical doctors were held in quite as high esteem back at the turn of the century as they are today. The best I can ever tell, I think he was an alcoholic and ended up dying of something, which according to the 1920 census, or something I read, was TB which may be related. I really don>t know. But my father claimed that he wasn>t able to go to college because his father had died when he was 15 or 17, still in high school. He just did what most people did. He got the first job he could get working at the local bank.