The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project

The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project AMBASSADOR JOHN WOLF Interviewed by: Kenneth Brown Initial interview date: October 14, 2014 Copyright 2015 ADST Q: This is Kenneth Brown conducting an interview on behalf of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training with Ambassador John Wolf. John, welcome. I assume you go by John. WOLF: I do. Q: OK. Let’s start off with when and when you were born. WOLF: Philadelphia, September, 1948. Q: 1948. And did you stay -- did your family stay in Philadelphia for a long time after that? Did you grow up in Philadelphia? WOLF: I grew up in Philadelphia, my mother and father lived there until my father’s death, and my mother lived there until her death in 2013. In fact, she was born there. Q: Tell me a little bit about your family background, their families and then on up to, you know, your own association with the family. WOLF: My father was born in Pittsburgh, moved to Atlantic City, grew up in Atlantic City, and eventually went off to Dartmouth College, then Harvard for law school. With the exception of three and a half years when he went to Washington during World War II, he was a lawyer in Philadelphia from 1940 until 1974 when he died. My mother was born in Philadelphia. She grew up in Philadelphia. She went to Goucher College in Baltimore, and then returned to Philadelphia when she was married. She stayed in Philadelphia and she lived within 10 miles of where she grew up for her whole life. Q: What about sort of the ancestry? Let’s start with your father’s side. Tell me a little bit about his family background. WOLF: That’s a little bit vague. Q: Well, OK (laughs). WOLF: That’s a little bit vague, but his parents, at some point, came from Eastern Europe. They lived in Pittsburgh, where my father was born, then moved to Atlantic City. 1 They died a long time ago, I think before my father was married. His mother died -- my grandmother I guess -- died I think in the ‘40s. My mother’s family came from Germany. And they had been in Philadelphia for several generations. My mother’s father was a hat maker in Philadelphia. Hats were a big thing. My mother used to tell stories about going to Atlantic City for the Easter Parade where her father would stand proudly on the sidelines and say, “That’s my hat. That’s my hat. That’s my hat.” Interestingly, one of my father’s clients was Hat Corporation of America. So, my father, who almost never accepted gifts from clients, did wear a hat. The Hat Corporation gave him two Tyrolean hats, which he wore -- and they replaced the periodically. The only other gifts he took were those awful, annual Horn & Hardart Christmas cakes. They used to sit around on a counter until Easter and then we’d throw them away. Q: So you came along in 1948 WOLF: I came along in 1948, the second of two children. I have a brother who was born in 1946. Q: Brother is older. What is he doing? WOLF: He’s a lawyer. Q: What was family life like -- family life like for you -- WOLF: It was pretty relaxed. Q: -- growing up in Philadelphia? WOLF: We were middle-class, upper middle-class I suppose, in suburban Philadelphia. My parents were socially very involved in the community. My father used to go into Philadelphia by train every day at the same hour on the same train, and he came home at the same hour, on the same train. We had family dinner together most every night. And then my father would usually go off to a meeting (he was on a number of civic and non-profit boards), or he’d work in his office upstairs, or he’d fall asleep on the couch in the living room. I’ve taken up the sleeping on the couch routine. It’s a very honorable pursuit. My mother was busy all day doing a dozen, different volunteer projects. She was intensely interested in issues related to education. She (like was my father) was very active in the United Way (both were vice-chairman at one point or another) and in the Federation of Jewish Agencies. One of my mother’s favorite programs -- one of the ones of which she was most proud -- was an art program she initiated in the Philadelphia School System for elementary school students -- Art Within Touch. We used to have a bunch of statues that she had collected -- statues of elephants and kangaroos and birds, busts (peoples’ heads) and stuff like that that she used to cart around in the back of her car and set up in elementary schools in northeast Philadelphia. She’d set the exhibit up 2 and when the kids came in she’d encourage them to close their eyes and feel the statuary, to use their imaginations. Since neither the kids nor even many of the teachers had exposure to art (and travel), this was a way to give them new experiences. And she supplemented the statuary with pictures she took whenever she traveled -- and she traveled a lot! I went to public school for four years and then I went to Chestnut Hill Academy for the rest of my elementary and secondary education. After CHA, I went on to Dartmouth, I was accepted into the Foreign Service the summer I graduated. So it was privileged upbringing, but my parents showed early that with privilege came responsibility to give back. Q: Were your parents politically engaged? WOLF: No. Q: And so there wasn't much political conversation at these family dinners? WOLF: Discussions ranged but it wasn't like the Kennedys sitting down to talk about politics or the world. My parents were interesting people and were interested in what was going on in Philadelphia and the world around. Q: And it was pretty normal in terms of playing with the other kids in the neighborhood and -- WOLF: When first growing up, yes, because I was in a school close enough that I could even ride my bike or walk. I think about that now when I look at my grandchildren; they live a mile and a half from the elementary school. But when they’re old enough -- they’re unlikely to have the freedom in their suburban neighborhood that I had. Once I went off to Chestnut Hill, I sort of separated from Wyncote, the community I grew up in, and was absorbed in Chestnut Hill. Q: But you still lived at home. WOLF: O f course. But we left -- I left home at quarter of eight in the morning and got home 5:30 or six because after school there were always sports, clubs or whatever. And at home there was a pile of homework. Summers I spent in North Carolina. Q: Were you much of a reader? Were there things that particularly interested you or that you were interested in aside from the homework and -- WOLF: I always read -- I started off with Hardy Boy books and Tom Swift books and Landmark books. You know, “I was there at the Battle of Bataan”; “The Wright Brothers:’ etc. I mean I must have had 30 or 40 of those Landmark books -- I loved them and reread them frequently. I read a lot of history and historical biographies -- I still do, plus a lot of “airplane books” (easy fiction). 3 Q: (laughs) Q: Did you have an international bent particularly in high school, thinking of things sort of foreign affairs or maybe sort of history of the U.S.? Was it -- WOLF: History of the U.S. And I was a big fan of Winston Churchill. You know, when I grew up, if people said “State Department” it was pretty close to “what state?” My career move to the State Department -- we’ll get to that I suppose. Q: Yes, we will. WOLF: … this was not a preordained progress to the Foreign Service Test by any stretch of the imagination. I was expecting to go to law school. Q: OK, before we get that far, so after Chestnut Hill you went off to Dartmouth. WOLF: Right. Q: OK. And what did you major in there? WOLF: English. Q: English? WOLF: English and American art, with a number of history courses. Q: Interesting. Did you take any courses that one might think of as preparatory for a career in the Foreign Service? WOLF: History and government, and two economics courses. I suppose several of them helped with the written and oral exams. Q: Tell me -- so after Dartmouth, did you -- what happened next? Q: At Dartmouth, OK. WOLF: In my junior/senior year, senior year, I took the Law Boards, Business Boards, and Graduate Record Exams. And I took the Foreign Service Test. Q: All -- WOLF: Clear sign of a perfect path forward, any path will do. Q: (laughs) Yeah, right. 4 WOLF: But I was pretty much determined to go to law school. I got into Georgetown and I sent off my $50 to Georgetown and I’m still on the register. They’re waiting for me to show up and matriculate. Q: (laughs) WOLF: But I also took the Foreign Service Test, just another of the GRE type tests the fall of my senior year. And, that was the last that I really thought about the Foreign Service Test -- I mean about the Foreign Service -- until weeks -- months later? Whatever.

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