Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs History Project

The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs History Project DAVID C. PIERCE Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial Interview date: March 10, 1999 Copyright 2018 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Background and Education Born in Des Moines, Iowa on August 29, 1944 Father worked for the FBI Grandfather was a notable Marine and a founder of Quantico Grew up in Yeadon, PA Graduated High School 1962 Dickinson College, Graduated 1966 Graduate work at Temple University Political science Chiang Mai, Thailand 1968-1971 Peace corps Teaching, particularly in physical education and swimming Married in 1968 to another trainee from Illinois Thai were very supportive of U.S. action in Vietnam Swim Coach, YMCA 1971-1973 Joined the Foreign Service 1973 Retook written exam in 1972 Counter-terrorism in the mid-1970s Belize’ Deputy Principal Officer 1974-1976 Discussion of sanitation, food production, climate, and environment “Visamon” - Consulate Work Washington, DC; ARA/CMA 1976-1979 (Bureau of Inter-American Affairs, Office of Caribbean and Mexican Affairs) Caribbean Desk “Lobster War” in the Bahamas (influx of Haitian refugees) Sally Shelton and Barbados/Guadalupe 1 Washington, DC; Economic Bureau 1979-1981 Office of Development and Finance Inter-American Development Bank California, Pierson Fellowship 1981-1983 Refugee and Immigrant Affairs Coordinator Seoul, Korea— Economic Officer (1983-1885) 1983-1987 Demonstrations, political unrest, and economic booms Banking and Investment Political/Military Officer (1985-1987) Khartoum, Sudan—Refugee coordinator 1988-1989 Ethnic Tensions South Sudanese, Eritrean, and Ethiopian refugees Bangkok, Thailand—Refugee Migration Coordinator 1989-1992 Burmese, Lao, Cambodian Refugees Resettlement issues - Economic and social The Vietnamese government “Amerasians” Washington, DC—Senior Seminar 1992-1993 Diversity in the State Department, Women’s Class Action suit Washington, DC—AF Office Director 1993-1994 Somali Task force Haitian Task Force Washington, D.C.—AF/EPS Office Director 1994-1995 Economic Policy Office Cape Town, South Africa—Principal Officer 1995-1997 Retirement 1998 INTERVIEW [Note: This interview was not edited by Mr. Pierce.] Q: Today is March 10, 1999. This is an interview with David C. Pierce. This is being done on behalf of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. I’m Charles 2 Stuart Kennedy. David, let’s start at the beginning. Can you tell me when and where you were born and something about your family? PIERCE: I was born in Des Moines, Iowa on August 29, 1944. The reason it was Des Moines has something to do with my family. My father was an FBI agent, a new FBI agent as of 1941 so he had been transferred. He joined in Washington, DC, where he spent most of his time growing up and he and my mother were transferred first to Portland and then Salt Lake City, then Des Moines and finally Philadelphia. It was in the Des Moines part of that that I was born. I was the first of three children. Q: What sort of family did your father come from and your mother come from? PIERCE: That’s a good question, a very interesting question. Both of them graduated from Wilson Teachers College in Washington, DC. How they got there is quite different. My mother was the daughter of General Albertus W. Catlin, who was the first commandant of the Marine Corps and retired as a brigadier general and had been the commandant in Haiti. He had been on the battleship Maine when it was blown up and was a Medal of Honor winner in Vera Cruz. Q: Any relation to the painter? PIERCE: Yes, not directly, but there’s some. Q: Just for the record, he was a great painter of the West, the far West, where you could recall Indians during the 18th century, early 19th century. PIERCE: Early 19th century. George Catlin and he was, a lot of his work is in the 8th floor of the State Department as a matter of fact, quite a few pieces up there. Q: Also at the National Portrait Gallery. PIERCE: That’s correct. He grew up in New York. My grandfather––the general, the marine––was born in 1868, graduated from the naval academy in 1890 and probably to this day, still the most important accomplishment he had notwithstanding the Medal of Honor and notwithstanding the Quantico, setting up Quantico. He came back and he was a commandant later. He also took the six marines into battle, he was one of the colonels who not only trained them, he took them into battle. The marines took on the Germans and stopped the German advance. What I was about to say was as far as the marines and the navy were concerned, his greatest accomplishment was none of those. It was that he was the captain of the navy football team at a time when in the senior year when they beat army. Q: Absolutely. My brother is a naval academy graduate and I lived as a young boy in Annapolis and I know one has a set of priorities. 3 PIERCE: It’s pretty high on the priority list. In fact, he wrote a book. He was wounded. He took a bullet in the left lung a couple of inches from his heart. He survived for another 19 years, but he wrote a book called With the Help of God and a Few Marines which is half about the Marines and the divine and the other half about football. It’s very interesting because it really gives you a feel for the way football was used as an analogy to life and in particular and in general to the military because and it’s probably accurate, his visions of sport. They predate a lot of the stuff in the ‘30s for example with Notre Dame and the four horsemen and all of that by a generation. So, this is really interesting stuff for those who are interested in football history and the relationship between training and leadership and how you prepare people to deal with adversity and that kind of thing. It’s really a quite interesting piece of work and it’s much older than anything else I’ve seen on football. That’s my mother’s side and it’s interesting also. She was the only daughter of his second marriage. I knew my mother’s half-sisters on both sides, his and hers. My grandmother was named Martha Ellen Catlin when she was married, that’s also my mother’s name. They kind of came from the New York sort of part of the world and had that kind of world view. My father and his family came from Corydon, Kentucky. That’s where he was born. My mother was born in Washington, DC, at the old city hospital, not the new one. My father was born in Corydon, Kentucky and his father had been a YMCA executive. His mother lived to be 93. His grandfather lived to be 111. Judge Early, Robert Early was one of the men who built Corydon sort of from the ground up. He was a contractor, a judge. He was a Pony Express rider, just about everything you got. I actually saw him and he was 105 and I was 12. He was born in 1849 and he actually remembered parts of the Civil War. It was fascinating to talk to him. I never got to meet my mother’s parents. They both died before I was born, but I did know my grandparents on my father’s side. Q: I think it’s interesting because it sounds like you grew up with a sense of American history in America which is not necessarily typical of many people who have come in. Did you have a sort of historical feeling? PIERCE: Very much. I think my parents were careful to make sure that I got exposed to both sides of that. My mother was an activist in church circles, was a Methodist activist in the local church, but it was sort of from the peace perspective if you will. Maybe that doesn’t sound right, but something of a reaction, but I probably got an exposure on not only the historical side, but also the political activist side. My father was kind of conservative, not a movement conservative at all, but conservative in the sense that folks from the borderlands from Kentucky and Tennessee which is where his father came from. I grew up both with a sense of history and being part of the family on both sides and a sense of personalized history. Also, a sense of involvement and interest in the politics and political issues of the day. My parents had very different political views although they managed to have a pretty good marriage for 50 years. I think that was an important part of what’s in my background. Q: In growing up, where did you sort of particularly at the elementary pre-high school stage, get most of your education? 4 PIERCE: Actually I stayed in one school system my entire K-12. I grew up in a town called Yeadon, which is a little suburb, right outside of Philadelphia. Q: How do you spell that? PIERCE: Y-E-A-D-O-N. It was a community, one of the bedroom communities that developed off the streetcar lines in Philadelphia, the 34 and the 13. Q: The old main line? PIERCE: Well, no, this is south of the main line, the part that I grew up in is Delaware County. You know, pretty much blue collar although a mix of that blue collar and some white collar.

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