1 the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project JAMES WALLAR Interviewed by Charles S
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project JAMES WALLAR Interviewed by Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial Interview Date: March 9, 2002 Copyright 2020 INTERVIEW Q: Today is the ninth of March 2002. This is an interview with James Wallar. I am Charles Stuart Kennedy, and this is our first interview. OK, you are somewhat different from the majority of our people in that you have a background in the Treasury Department. Which I am delighted to get into because it is so important in our field of foreign affairs. Do you go by Jim or James? WALLAR: Jim. Q: Let’s start kind of at the beginning. I want to get a little feel where you were from. When and where were you born? WALLAR: I was born and reared in Columbus, Ohio. I spent four of my grade school years in eastern Pennsylvania in a little village just outside of Allentown called Cetronia known for Dorney Park which featured a huge roller coaster. Q: What about your parents? Where did your father’s family come from? WALLAR: Well I am glad you asked that question because one of my projects in my retirement is to investigate the family tree and, more interestingly, put it in an historical context. My father’s people we traced back to Virginia, the part that is now West Virginia, outside of Harper's Ferry along the Shenandoah River. This ancestor, William Waller, fought in the Revolutionary War, including the battles of Trenton, Princeton, and Monmouth Court House. Around 1795 the family migrated toward the western part of Virginia which is now Preston County West Virginia, southeast of Morgantown. Around about 1813 they moved further west, to the area of Cambridge, Ohio. Subsequent generations moved about south central Ohio. My grandfather, the first to receive a college level education, gravitated to Columbus turning his back on farming, the occupation of his forefathers, and taking up a new, white collar trade: accounting. Q: Before we do that in your research do you know where your family came from? I was thinking it would be England. 1 WALLAR: The lore in the greater Wallar community is that our line came from Wales. But no one can trace the vessel on which they crossed the Atlantic or where they landed. The supposition is that they came ashore in Philadelphia or Delaware, both of which were home to large Welsh communities. As many did at the time, they probably traveled to the Shenandoah Valley on the Great Wagon Trail through Pennsylvania and Maryland then across the Potomac around what is now Shepherdstown, West Virginia. Then some branches of Wallars drifted further south into Tennessee, and then out west to Missouri and Kansas. Some of the Wallars in Ohio moved to Indiana and Wisconsin. Q: OK, well now let’s take your grandparents. What were their occupations? WALLAR: My grandfather Wallar and his brother took the train from their small farming community of Mount Sterling, Ohio up to Columbus. He landed a position with an investment firm. At this time, in the 1920s, this was an up and coming business. He was very good with figures and rose to controller in the firm. My father always told us that grandfather lost money in the stock market crash. My research suggests something different. The owners of his firm were convicted of mail fraud, deliberately deceiving investors. He was not implicated in the scheme, but he probably did lose money and was shaken. His next job was reasonably staid, selling insurance. He joined Massachusetts Mutual which at the time was one of the few insurance companies that had not been embroiled in a financial scandal. He was an insurance salesman for the rest of his life. On my mother’s side, her father’s name was Grau, “grey” in German. His parents came to America around 1890 and came directly from New York to Columbus, Ohio. Migration was big business in Germany with agents providing background on the best places to live and selling train tickets. Columbus had a very large German community in the south end of town. Small red brick houses with cobblestone streets with the slanted slate roofs and bakeries and of course breweries were reminiscent of their homeland. His father was a brew master until prohibition forced him to some other occupation. My grandfather was a tool and die operator in a Timken roller bearing plant in Columbus and eventually worked his way up to be a floor manager. My two grandfathers were very different. Grandfather Wallar had gone to college, studied Greek, loved poetry, politics, and crossword puzzles. Grandfather Grau dropped out of high school and was a self-made, hard-working, hard- drinking individual. Grandfather Wallar married a first generation German immigrant, and Grandfather Grau married into a family with German roots but who had been in American two generations. Q: OK, let’s go to your Grandfather Wallar. Where did he go to college? WALLAR: He went to Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. We have a picture of him on the 1909 football team sitting on the steps of the main building of the college in front of a grassy plain where they played. My sisters and I recently visited the college. The director of alumni relations was enthusiastic when he saw the picture. The building is still there; the grassy plain is still there; but Antioch has long since given up having a 2 football team. Q: Has Antioch closed or not? WALLAR: It had closed but it re-opened. When I was going to school at Ohio Wesleyan University, Antioch was part of the Great Lakes College Association (GLCA). One of the GLCA overseas programs I participated in was through Antioch College. During those days the school was considered extremely liberal. At the time my grandfather attended it was a very strict and affiliated with the Christian Connection. Horace Mann, its founder, was an educational reformer and believed that a well-rounded individual needed to study science, math, philosophy, and history. Q: What about your father? WALLAR: My father was a salesman. He attended Dennison University in Granville, Ohio and became enamored with dairy technology. He believed that the dairy industry had a bright future. He transferred from Dennison to The Ohio State University and majored in dairy technology. Just after he graduated he enlisted in the Army Air Corps as a second lieutenant. We were told many years later when he applied for a pension that it was unusual for college graduates to enlisted at that time. He specialized in radio communications and managed air control towers around the United States, mostly in Pueblo, Colorado. After the war he ran the Borden’s milk and ice cream facility in Columbus, Ohio. Growing up I would sometimes accompany my mother would to pick him up from work. He would take me into the cold storage room, open up a quart of chocolate milk in a glass bottle. He would drink half and I would have a couple of swigs, and he would finish the rest. Every birthday we had ice cream cake that he would bring home packed in dry ice with the typical dry ice cloud that would ooze out of the container. He reached a ceiling in Borden’s and joined the Mojonnier Brothers who manufactured dairy processing equipment. That is when we moved to Pennsylvania. His job was to go around to dairy farms and sell bulk coolers where farmers would store the milk until tank trucks would pick it up. Then he graduated to selling processing equipment to dairies like Lehigh Dairy in Allentown. As he was approaching retirement he was let go. He just cost them too much money with his salary. Being a salesman and determined to succeed he applied to an ad to sell plumbing supplies. Now he knew as much plumbing as the average do-it-yourselfer – maybe less. But he said OK, this is what has been given to me so he picked up the heavy bags of O rings and pipes and what have you and put them in his trunk and started knocking on doors. Within two years he was one of the firm’s top salespersons. Q: And your mother? WALLAR: When she met my father, she was working in a factory in Columbus and then 3 she studied stenography so she could take shorthand. She drove a Red Cross station wagon for publicity purposes during the war and worked at the defense depot facility in Columbus close to the airport. After the war she stayed home and raised three children. She was active as a church secretary and very religious and welcoming. She never met a stranger. I thought about today’s interview and putting my family history together, I credit my mother’s openness to let me study overseas as an important factor form me pursuing a career that would be largely spent abroad. Q: What religion did you follow. WALLAR: Lutheran. Q: Did that stick with you for your career? WALLAR: No. While I was raised Luther while at college I attended a Methodist church because I enjoyed the minster’s sermons more than the Lutheran minister’s. Sunday mornings were quiet on campus, and the church was a pleasant fifteen minute walk. I married an Episcopalian. When we first married, we would go to church in Georgetown. In our overseas tours finding a convenient church was not always easy so we didn’t attend services except on holidays. On Sunday mornings I would set aside an hour to read philosophy.