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The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project AMBASSADOR EDWARD W. GNEHM, JR. Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: May 22, 2014 Copyright 2017 ADST [Note: This is an interview in progress. Additional portions will be added as they are completed.] Q: Today is the 22nd of May, 2014, and an interview with Ambassador Edward W. Gnehm -- better known to friends and colleagues as “Skip.” GNEHM: Correct. Q: Well Skip, in the first place when and where were you born? GNEHM: I was born in Carrollton, Georgia, and, in fact, grew up in Georgia. Q: Okay then let’s talk about the Gnehm family. In the first place how the hell did you get that name and where did it come from? GNEHM: That is a very interesting question given the number of times in my career I was asked that question. Of course I got my family name from my father and grandfather. My grandfather was actually an immigrant from Switzerland where the family lived for centuries. But the interesting thing about my family name is that virtually all of the Arabs that I’ve known through the years have believed it to be an Arabic name as we pronounce it similarly to an Arabic family. My Arab friends just assumed that I was of Arab origin. And the Israelis believed that as well! Q: Being an Arab is quite handy. GNEHM: But in truth it is a Swiss-German name. Q: Well what do you know about the Gnehm family? What were they doing in Switzerland and why did they leave the Alps and go to Georgia? GNEHM: They were farmers in dairy country and my great-grandfather actually was a cook on a ship on the Rhine River. Family lore is that it was very bad economic times that led him to bring the family to New York City where he became a baker in one of the large hotels there. Q: When was that that they came over? 1 GNEHM: It was just about the turn of the 1900s. Q: Well then what was your father doing in, is it Carrollton? GNEHM: In Georgia. Q: Yes. GNEHM: Well my father was born in the Bronx. Being a Southerner I never discussed that when I was a young kid growing up in the state of Georgia! My father joined the military when World War II broke out. The Army sent him to Macon, Georgia, where he was in charge of the NCO club at the base there. He had been working for Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in its home office in Manhattan before the war. So when he got out of the military after the war, he remained in Georgia working for Metropolitan Life -- first in La Grange and then in Albany. Q: NCO means a non-commissioned officers; that is corporals, sergeants? GNEHM: Correct. It was while he was working in the NCO Club that he met my mother. She was a volunteer. They got married and that’s when I came along. Since the NCOs called my father “Skipper,” I picked up the name Skippy, the diminutive. I got rid of the last “py” at some point when I was in second grade. So that’s what brought my father south and that’s where he met my mother, whose family is an old Georgia family. Q: I see. Well now on your mother’s side what- where did her family come from? GNEHM: Her family came from England to the then colony of Virginia in the 1700s. Over the years the family migrated first to North Carolina then on to South Carolina and, ultimately, to Georgia. That was in the days when the Creek Indians still roamed much of northwestern Georgia. Mom’s family settled in Carrollton where they were quite prominent throughout the 1800s until the late 1900s. Q: What sort of schooling did she have? GNEHM: My mother went to LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia; my father started at Syracuse but didn’t complete a degree. Q: Did Sherman’s army pass through Carrollton? GNEHM: No, but my great-great-grandfather was actually a cavalry colonel in the Confederate Army of Tennessee. And my great-great grandfather on my father’s side was in the Union Army. He fought the battle at The Wilderness. He was given the Medal of Honor for saving the American flag from capture by the Confederates. 2 Q: So what was Carrollton like? I mean as a kid. GNEHM: Well, I actually didn’t grow up in Carrollton. I used to spend my summers there but my parents moved from La Grange to Albany, Georgia, when I was 4. That is where I grew up and where I went to high school. My family (which included my two sisters – Barbara and Jane Ellen) lived at 1710 Lincoln Avenue, which I always thought was a weird street name in the south! Q: Okay. Well let’s talk about Albany. What was it like? GNEHM: It was a very interesting city, located in southwest Georgia not so very far from Carter and his peanuts. That part of Georgia is famous for watermelons, rattlesnakes, and swamps in addition to peanuts, but Albany was very interesting city. It was a fast growing town in the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s. There were two U.S. military bases in Albany. One, the Marine Corps Supply Center, is still there and supports Marines in the eastern United States and Europe. The second one was Turner Air Force Base, which was at one time a SAC (Strategic Air Command) base and sometimes was the base for other Air Force elements. The interesting thing about both of those military bases is that they brought into a community that was very conservative, rural, and agricultural people from all over the United States. The military families brought new ideas and broadened horizons in Albany. They were very active in the community -- very civic minded. For example, they were deeply involved with schools and promoted excellence in teaching and in building up the curriculum. They organized various civic programs, like bringing in an opera group or an orchestra -- programs that you would not have normally found in rural Georgia. I was active in Boy Scouts. My Scout master was a Marine Corps captain and many other officers and enlisted men were volunteer leaders. Q: Oh boy. GNEHM: The military really made Albany a dynamic community. Q: How about being a kid there? Let’s take sort of elementary school. What was it like? Was it sort of Tom Sawyerish or what were you up to? GNEHM: Well, it was a little bit like that because the house that I lived in was on the edge of town. A half a block from my house there were fields, woods, and swamps. So I spent my time climbing trees, digging in fields and running through swamps and pretending the Indians were still around and things of that sort. Q: Oh yes. GNEHM: But it was, as you know, a very, very different time in those days. It was a segregated South. 3 Q: As a very young kid did, you have much contact with what we call today African- Americans? GNEHM: Well, the answer is “no” and “yes.” I can remember exactly the day when I realized that there were people with black skin. I don’t know if you want me to go into that. Q: Yes, I would. GNEHM: It was really a dramatic moment in my life. Q: Well how did that come about? GNEHM: It was in Carrollton, Georgia, where my mom’s family lived. My aunt, a dowager aunt, at least she seemed to be in those days, was a great favorite. She always pampered me and fed me. She lived in a house not far from my grandfather’s and in the backyard of the house was an older wooden framed house in which a black family lived. The children in the family were my best buddies and every time I went to Carrollton I would race to her house to see her and then bound out the back of the house to see my friends. And then there was one summer! I’m going to say I might have been five or six. I bounded down the street, raced through the front door, said ‘hey’ to Aunt Katie Lou, and bolted out the back door headed for my friends. They were all standing on the porch looking at me headed their way when she yelled at me, “Skippy, you come back here this instant.” I turned around and walked back to her because her voice was unusually stern and angry. She waged her finger at me and said, “It’s about time you learned that white kids don’t play with black kids. You understand that?” Q: Good God. GNEHM: I sat down on her back porch looking at my friends across the yard and just bawled my head off -- but I never went back. Q: Yes. GNEHM: Until that moment I never realized they were black. Q: Well did this come up, I’m talking about particularly your early years, six sort of up through elementary and all, did it come up in conversations or was it just sort of acknowledged and one didn’t even, I mean the- the- you might say, what do you call it, the black/white problem, did it-? GNEHM: This is really a very interesting question and, as we get into it, I have a very interesting story to tell.

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