Browning, Steven A

The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project AMBASSADOR STEVEN A. BROWNING Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: August 16, 2016 Copyright 2017 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Background Born in Lubbock, raised in Odessa Baylor University and University of Houston Damascus, Syria 1974-1977 Teacher, Department of Overseas Schools Amman, Jordan 1978-1979 Teacher Entered Foreign Service 1981 Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic 1981-1983 Vice consul Nairobi, Kenya 1983-1985 GSO Alexandria, Egypt 1985-1987 Management Counselor Colombo, Sri Lanka 1987-1990 Supervisory GSO Management Counselor Washington, DC 1990-1992 Post Management Officer for West Africa, Africa Bureau, Office of the Executive Director Washington, DC 1992-1993 Special Assistant, Office of the Under Secretary for Management Dar es Salaam, Tanzania 1993-1996 Deputy Chief of Mission Washington, DC 1996-1998 1 Executive Director, Africa Bureau Foreign Service Institute 1998-2000 Dean of School of Professional and Area Studies (SPAS) University of Southern California 2000-2002 University of California-Davis 2002-2003 Diplomat-in-Residence Lilongwe, Malawi 2003-2004 Ambassador Iraq 2004-2005 Management Counselor Washington, DC 2007-2008 Iraq Management Issues Special Assignment Kampala, Uganda 2006-2009 Ambassador Washington, DC 2009-2012 Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary (PDAS) for Human Resources University of California-Berkeley 2012-2014 Diplomat-in-Residence Retirement December 31, 2014 WAE Mentor to new Chiefs of Mission INTERVIEW Q: Today is the 16th of August 2016 and this interview with Ambassador Steven A. Browning; our first interview. Steven, let’s start at the beginning – when and where were you born? BROWNING: I was born in Lubbock, Texas, December 6th, 1949. Q: Let’s check out the family. Where on your father’s side do the Brownings come from? 2 BROWNING: It’s unclear. We suspect they were originally from England and immigrated to the U.S. and eventually Texas to work in the oilfields. My paternal grandfather and great grandfather retired out of the oilfield; both my father and I worked in the oil fields for a while, as well. Earlier than my great grandfather, we’re not quite sure about the family origins. No one’s really researched it beyond the mid-1800s. Q: Let’s talk about your father – what do you know about him? BROWNING: He was one of five children, the first in his family to graduate from college. He served in World War II as an MP (military police) in Europe and came back and went to Texas Tech University in Lubbock on the GI Bill. He worked as a bellhop at a Hilton Hotel while he was going to school. Q: What do you know about your mother and her background? BROWNING: They’re all sort of northern Europeans – Dutch, English, Scotch, Irish and German. The family lore is that the original immigrant was a pirate who smuggled his son to the States in a flour barrel. We haven’t been able to verify that. The earliest record of one branch of the family is from the 1760s when one of our ancestors was being sued over a land dispute. Another member of that family line was a member of the Jesse James gang. Clell Miller was captured as a 14-year-old by the Southern forces during the Civil War. Shortly thereafter the Northern forces captured him from the southerners. Since he was still a boy and an innocent bystander they didn’t hold him for long. Then he went off and joined the Jesse James gang and got himself shot and killed in Minnesota. He was 26. We have another family member who was a preacher in Texas who went to court for poisoning his in-laws! He poisoned seven and three died. (Laughter) I finally stopped researching since I don’t know what else I’ll find if I keep digging into that family line. Maybe one of these days I’ll build up the courage to do some more research. Q: It does sound like your family was rather eclectic, playing every angle. BROWNING: Right – we are not blue bloods by any stretch of the imagination. Q: A lot of blue bloods would if you looked too close you’d find were doing what your family did, too! BROWNING: You’re right. Q: Tell me about your mother. BROWNING: My mother was raised in West Texas as well, on a ranch. She and my father met after he returned from World War II, at a prayer meeting (she says that his prayers were answered). She finished a year of college before they married and then she quit school and worked in a cotton seed lab to help put him through school. After my brother and I were in junior high and high school, she did something very rare in West 3 Texas in the mid-1960s. She went back to college, first at the local junior college in our home town of Odessa. She completed her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in art and education at Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Texas, a three hour drive from Odessa. It was during this period that my brother and I learned to cook, wash clothes and generally learn to take care of ourselves (for which my wife thanks my mother frequently). She then went on to become an elementary school teacher. My mother loved to travel and was the prime motivator for family trips. Q: Where were you raised? BROWNING: I was raised in Odessa, Texas. My dad earned a degree in business administration and went to work for an oil company in a real small town of about 300 people called Goldsmith. We lived there for the first five years of my life. Then we moved to the big city of Odessa, Texas in the Permian Basin in West Texas. Then dad left the oil business and started his own insurance company. My mother helped him establish the business and was his office manager and bookkeeper for a while. He kept growing the business and it eventually became the largest insurance agency between El Paso and Fort Worth. He was really successful at it. He was also very active in local civic activities. Q: How long were you a kid growing up in Goldsmith? BROWNING: It was just for my first five years. I don’t remember much of it at all. My grandparents stayed there as long as they were able to live independently, so I’d go back and visit often. It’s about 30 miles from Odessa where I grew up, so it’s all in the same neighborhood. Q: When you as a kid began to know what was happening around you, where were you living then? BROWNING: That’s Odessa. It’s a town of about 100,000 now; when I was growing up it was probably closer to 80,000. Its twin city is Midland where George W. Bush grew up until he went off to boarding school. Bush the father was an oilman; he took his family money and built on it. They lived for a while in Odessa then moved to Midland which is about 20 miles away. Odessa has some ranching and some cotton farming, but primarily the economy is all about oil and gas. As I got older I worked summers in the oil fields…boy, that’s hard work. Q: My brother lived in Midland for a while. He was working for Schlumberger, an oil well… BROWNING: Exactly. They’re still big out there. Q: What was it like as a kid in Odessa? 4 BROWNING: I went to high school at Permian High School which was the subject of the book Friday Night Lights, if you’re familiar with that, on high school football and the culture of West Texas. Q: I’ve heard of it, haven’t read it. BROWNING: They made a movie out of the book, then it became at TV show. It’s a pretty accurate representation of Odessa and West Texas. It’s a very conservative area, with salt of the earth, hardworking folks, but not a lot of outside stimulus. Not a lot of cultural activities. It was sports and church and hunting and Boy Scouts. But I had a great childhood. I could ride my bike all over town. Parents would kick us out of the house and say “Be home before dark;” we’d go off into the pasture and hunt jackrabbits and rattlesnakes. So I had a very “free range” sort of childhood. I went to Permian High School, and became involved in music, the band (I played trombone) and choir for a while. Church was also a big influence in West Texas. Q: What particular church were you in? BROWNING: Southern Baptist. That was the dominant denomination out there – that and Church of Christ. Q: In elementary school, what were your favorite subjects? BROWNING: It depended on the teacher. I lived right across the street from the elementary school so I spent a lot of time there. Some of the teachers would hang around after class and grade papers; I’d help by cleaning the blackboard and that kind of stuff. I tended toward literature, English, and history as opposed to math and science. I was much more comfortable with the liberal arts. Q: Were you sort of the good student? BROWNING: I was not an embarrassment to my family, but I was not at the top of the list either. I studied hard and made As and Bs, but I would not ever describe myself as an academic superstar.

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