Library of Congress Interview with Winston Lord Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project WINSTON LORD Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy and Nancy Bernkopf Tucker Initial interview date: April 28, 1998 Copyright 2003 ADST I. FAMILY, TRAVEL, EDUCATION, SUMMER JOB(1937-1961) Q: This is an interview with Winston Lord. This is being done on behalf of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. I'm Charles Stuart Kennedy. Win, let's start at the beginning. Could you tell me when and wheryou were born, and something about your family? LORD: I was born August 14, 1937 in New York City. My father was Oswald Bates Lord of Tarrytown, New York, born in 1903. My mother was Mary Pillsbury Lord from Minneapolis, Minnesota, born in 1904. My brother, Charles Pillsbury Lord, was born in New York City in 1933. I married Bette Bao in Washington, DC on May 4, 1963. Our daughter, Elizabeth Pillsbury Lord, was born in 1964 in Washington, DC. Our son, Winston Bao Lord, was born in 1967 in Washington, DC. Q: What sort of business was your father in? LORD: My father was in the textile business, went in the family business, it was called Galey and Lord, and it eventually became part of Burlington Industries. When he left Yale Interview with Winston Lord http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib000710 Library of Congress University he took a round-the-world trip and got interested in world affairs, and also was interested in other issues, but felt an obligation to help the family business and went into that. I think he always frankly regretted it somewhat and never really enjoyed it. Q: What about your mother? She's a Pillsbury. LORD: She was of the Pillsbury Flour family in Minneapolis, but when she married my father and moved to New York she immediately began working in welfare programs, going out to Harlem and doing a lot of social welfare work, and then working for Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. She then had a very distinguished career, both domestically and internationally. It included a lead role in the New York's World's Fair in 1939. I don't know her exact title but she'll be in Who's Who of course. She was one of the top officers in the Women's Army Corps in World War II, WACS. I remember she was one of the first people to fly into Hitler's bunker at the end of the war. Among other things, she worked in Republican politics, she was a liberal Republican, was a supporter of Harold Stassen and Governor Dewey, also Wendell Wilkie. She was at the famous convention when Wilkie was elected in 1940. She was in the rafters helping to lead the cheers. So she spent a lot of time in Republican politics, culminating in the 1952 Eisenhower campaign. She worked very hard to round up delegates for that historic Texas convention where Eisenhower edged out Taft, and was crucial in helping secure the nomination for Eisenhower. Then during the campaign of 1952 against Stevenson she was co-chairman of National Citizens for Eisenhower which was designed to attract independents and Democrats to Eisenhower's cause. After the election Eisenhower appointed her as a delegate to the United Nations under Henry Cabot Lodge who was the ambassador to the UN. She served eight years on the U.S. delegation. She was also the successor to Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt as United Nation's representative for the United States to the Human Rights Commission. She had a whole series of other assignments. She was active as head the Junior League of New York, Interview with Winston Lord http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib000710 Library of Congress for example. She was president of the International Rescue Committee, a major U.S. nonpartisan organization designed to relieve refugees abroad and to resettle them in the United States. I'm now vice chairman of the International Rescue Committee, and joined it in large measure because of my loyalty to her and my belief in the organization. The IRC was founded by Einstein to help Jews escape from Germany. We can go into that in more detail later when we get into my career. She was head of many organizations which I can't recall offhand, both international and domestic. She did a great deal of traveling throughout her life. She was on many boards, the Atlantic Institute, and many others, and I'm just beginning to scratch the surface. She had a very distinguished career. Who's Who would have more details. Q: How did this play on you? You were born in 1937, so by '45 we'just entered the war. But your mother was in the WACS. How about you? LORD: I might add that one of my earliest recollections, not the earliest but in terms of international affairs, was having a birthday party in Minneapolis where I visited my grandmother every summer; I visited my other grandmother in Beach Haven, New Jersey every summer. In the middle of the birthday party people came in and said that we had ended the war with Japan, it was August 14, 1945. And being a young kid then I didn't quite understand the full implications, I was a little annoyed that my birthday party was interrupted. But from my earliest childhood, when we had dinner at home, American politics and international affairs were often the subjects of conversations. That was one reason I got interested in public service. My mother's career certainly had a deep impact on me in terms of leading me towards public service and international affairs. My father was interested in all these issues although not directly involved, and had a very strong ethical sense, in the sense of serving one's country as well. So I think the dinner table conversations, my mother's career, and then a lot of early traveling with my parents and then on my own, all began to steer me toward a life of public service and international affairs. Interview with Winston Lord http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib000710 Library of Congress Q: We'll come to traveling in a minute, but what about early on, reading often plays quite a role in the development of young people. I was wondering what type of books were you reading? LORD: I'm not good at remembering these things specifically. In the course of my education, I went to Buckley school, a private school in New York, and then Hotchkiss Prep School in Connecticut, and then Yale University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy for a Master's degree. And, of course, in my early schooling I had the usual exposure to literature and history. On my own I would read both fiction and some history and biography. I had broad interests. I wouldn't say I was narrowly focused on international affairs at least in my early years, or my teens. Q: I assume the family was a reading family? LORD: My mother more than my father. My father would read mostly non-fiction, was not a great reader. My mother read a great deal in terms of keeping up with her career. She also was fluent in French and would read a lot of French novels. Q: Did you have brothers, sisters? LORD: One brother, four years older. He went on to do international business and then he went into education at the age of 40 and was headmaster at a couple of girls' boarding schools. Another brother, Richard, was born badly deformed and died after a few weeks in 1935 - this was a result of my pregnant mother being thrown into icy waters, surviving the sinking of the ship The Mohawk off the Jersey coast. Q: Did you start traveling at a fairly early age? LORD: We started traveling quite early. As I recall some of the early trips included a couple of vacations in Bermuda with my parents in the late 1940s. About that time, or maybe a little bit later, a Caribbean boat cruise. Then my mother and father went on a Interview with Winston Lord http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib000710 Library of Congress round-the-world trip on their 25th anniversary in 1954. I was at Hotchkiss at the time during Christmas vacation. I recall the silly attitude before I went with them for part of their trip that, gee I was going to miss all these Christmas parties in New York City. I realized once I went and after I got back what an idiot I had been, and what a terrific exposure to the world this began for me. We went briefly to Europe, including Paris, and then on to the Middle East, including Egypt, Syria and Lebanon and Turkey. Then my brother and I had to come back and my parents continued on their trip. That trip really began to energize my interest in foreign affairs and foreign cultures, and a sense of public service. Just to continue on the travel, when I was at Yale University I took two major trips during the summers of 1956 and 1958. In 1956, I went to Europe - London, Paris and driving around France, Spain, running with the bulls at Pamplona, and then into Russia, both Moscow and St. Petersburg, and then down to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, Alma Ata, Tashkent, and Samarkand, extremely unusual at that point. We were the second American delegation, I believe, to go to Central Asia. Justice Douglas had been there the year before.