Interview with Robert E. Fritts

Library of Congress Interview with Robert E. Fritts The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project ROBERT E. FRITTS Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: September 8, 1999 Copyright 2004 ADST Q: Today is the 8th of September 1999. This is an interview with Robert E. Fritts.This is being done on behalf of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, and I'm Charles Stuart Kennedy. Bob and I are old friends. Could you tell me when, where you were born and something about your family? FRITTS: I was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1934. I had the good fortune of being raised in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, then labeled as the “largest village in the world.” In contrast to a Foreign Service career, we didn't move. I went through the entire Oak Park public school system (k-12). My parents were born and grew up in St. Joseph, Illinois, a very small town near Champaign-Urbana, home of the University of Illinois. My father, the son of a railroad section track foreman, was poor, but worked his way through the University of Illinois to gain a mechanical engineering degree in 1922. He was a very good, serious and self-disciplined student. Hard to imagine now, but much of his income was earned from trapping muskrats, mink and foxes in and along the sluggish streams of the area. My mother also lived in the town, the daughter of dairy farmers. She became an elementary school teacher. They were high school sweethearts who were married in Chicago after Interview with Robert E. Fritts http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib000399 Library of Congress my father found an entry-level management job in the steel industry. Over some 30-plus years, he rose to become executive vice president of a family-owned fabricating firm, Taylor Forge Iron & Pipe Works, now defunct. Indeed, after later being taken over by Gulf and Western, it was razed.In terms of the Foreign Service, their background is interesting only in the context that while I was growing up, neither had any overseas or international exposure or interests. Neither did their parents. Nor for years did they know anyone who did, other than in the immigrant mix of Chicago. Several uncles served in WWII, but they were reticent to talk and had no desire to go abroad again. During WWII, my father was judged too important to the war effort for a uniform because of his key role in producing war materiel. In later years, after I was in the Foreign Service, he became somewhat internationally minded as the firm acquired several foreign plants in Scotland and elsewhere, which he visited frequently. In addition, the small firm became one of only three American companies with the skill to forge the large titanium rings that composed the skeletons of Minute Man missiles. In later years, the firm suffered greatly from losing its bread-and-butter business of pipe, fittings and flanges to Western European producers. He held the Marshall Plan responsible. Eventually, my older brother served in the Air Force and also worked for a time in the Philippines. I made international and foreign affairs a life. In retrospect, my family portrayed the general pattern of America in the 20th century - from farms, railroads and small towns to the city and industry, from a domestic industrial focus thru WWII to the Cold War and missile defense, from global military strength to trade competition and foreign investment, and a son representing the U.S. abroad in the Foreign Service. Q: How about life at home? What did one talk about sitting arounthe dinner table? Were there family chats or things of this nature? Interview with Robert E. Fritts http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib000399 Library of Congress FRITTS: Sure, in those days of “housekeeping Moms”, family dinners were standard. We always had sit-down dinners together. It was a routine and important aspect of a family (parents and two boys).I don't recall much abstract discussion and certainly not on foreign affairs. My father was a firm Republican, although he was also very pro-union. My mother was raised a Democrat and they teased each other about her vote for FDR in 1934 being offset by his vote against. I think it was the last Democrat vote she cast. As I recall, most of our table chat was on events of the day, with the exception that my father talked a good deal about leadership and management - of men, of course. He was a fine executive who never lost the common touch. My mother said that his father (a grandfather I never knew) had a town-wide reputation for running the teams who swung pickaxes for him on the Illinois Central railroad track. The men at Taylor Forge apparently loved and respected my father. In fact, no union at the main Cicero plant would sign a collective bargaining agreement unless my father's signature was on it. He had considered views about the capabilities of people and how to motivate them. He believed firmly that he had reciprocal obligations. My brother and I, in our adult lives, followed many of those principles and are much the better for it. Indeed, there were occasions in the Foreign Service when I consciously followed his ideas, such as periodically “walking the plant floor” of an embassy from motor pool to communications, trying to leave each “job” or post better than I found it, and identifying talent wherever it was at whatever level. Q: In the steel business, management wasn't regarded aprogressive. Your father was sort of a maverick, wasn't he? FRITTS: Not really. He just sincerely cared about men and thought good management was also good business. He was unusual for the time in his belief in and support of unions, in large part because he believed his father than been exploited by the railroad barons of the day. Interview with Robert E. Fritts http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib000399 Library of Congress Shortly after WWII, the plant had an extended major and violent strike by its certifiably Communist leadership. My father eventually resolved it, in considerable part because the men would not associate my father personally with the “capitalist” stereotypes portrayed by the strike leaders. I well recall from those table conversations a tenet that “Workers don't settle strikes, wives do,” in the sense that wives eventually put pressure on men to go back to work. I came close to trying that once in Kigali when the motor pool “downed tools,” but I wasn't sure if the approach would be cross-culturally transferable. Q: You went to school in Oak Park, Illinois. Were they publischools? FRITTS: Yes, all the way through. Q: Let's talk about elementary school. FRITTS: William Hatch School was one of about eight feeder schools into the high school. It provided a very good education with an emphasis on English. I can diagram sentences today to the nth branch. The teachers were excellent. They were all women and unmarried - a carryover from the Depression, WWII and the then-attitude that teaching was one of the few acceptable professions for women. Q: How about reading at the elementary level? Do you recall, diyou use the library a lot? FRITTS: I don't recall, but I was an inveterate reader as a boy. My grandmother, who lived in St. Joseph, Illinois, had a shelf of Civil War books inherited from her father, who had served with the 72nd Illinois Volunteers. The books were primarily memoirs of Union leaders e.g. Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Logan etc. I learned to read literately from those books, including by flashlight under a blanket in her house. A love of reading, of history, of non-fiction and of great men doing great things came from those volumes. I have them today at her behest. Q: What spurred your grandmother to have those Civil War memoirs? Interview with Robert E. Fritts http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib000399 Library of Congress FRITTS: Her father was a Civil War veteran. He, like tens of thousands of others, was part of a large market for books about the war in which he and they had fought. The books were marketed by book bummerswho peddled them by horse and wagon throughout the farms, towns and Grand Army of the Republic posts of a still mostly rural America, including St. Joseph. It was a good business. My grandmother had very few books and I doubt her father did. But she had these and treasured them even, though I suspect she had never read them. Q: The high school - was it called Oak Park High School? FRITTS: Actually, the Oak Park & River Forest Township High School. It was unusual for its time - quite large (about 2400 students) with functional buildings and grounds - almost like a small college in a middle-class suburb of western Chicago. It was recognized as one of the preeminent public high schools in the country. Again, English was emphasized. Even expository writing was virtually required. The English teachers lamented that Ernest Hemingway, an Oak Parker, had dropped out years before. They felt his writing would have been improved under their tutelage. About 90 percent of the graduates went on to college, which was unusual for any public high school then. For most Americans, secondary school is a very formative period and I was fortunate to live in Oak Park. Q: What courses particularly interested you? FRITTS: Well, I guess, the social sciences. I enjoyed history and literature.

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