Interview with Ambassador Henry Allen Holmes

Library of Congress Interview with Ambassador Henry Allen Holmes The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project AMBASSADOR HENRY ALLEN HOLMES Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: March 9, 1999 Copyright 2009 ADST Q: Today is March 9, 1999. This is an interview with Henry Allen Holmes. This is being done on behalf of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, and I'm Charles Stuart Kennedy. Allen, I want to start with the beginning. Could you tell me when and where you were born and then something about your parents? HOLMES: I was born the day that Hitler became chancellor of Germany, January 31, 1933, in Bucharest, Rumania, at the American legation, where my dad, Julius Cecil Holmes, was the charg# at the time. He was the number two guy in a two-guy legation, and the night that I was born he was getting phone calls from Foreign Service colleagues all over Western Europe wondering what the king of Rumania's move was going to be now that Hitler had become chancellor of Germany. Q: So you and Hitler sort of rose to power at the same time. HOLMES: Be careful in this interview. We have the same initials - A. H. Q: Could you tell me a bit about the background of your father and the background of your mother, please? Interview with Ambassador Henry Allen Holmes http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001561 Library of Congress HOLMES: My mother and father were both born and raised in Kansas. They went to Kansas University in Lawrence, Kansas, where my dad spent most of his life growing up. After the Rogers Act was passed- Q: 1924. HOLMES: -in 1925, establishing a competitive way of entering the Foreign Service, my father was one of the first - in fact, I believe he was in the first group that took the exam - passed, and entered the first class of the Foreign Service in 1925 and then had assignments in Marseilles - he learned to speak very good French - where one day in the consulate there was a Sacco-Vanzetti riot in front of the consulate. Somebody threw a grenade, it went under the desk, the grenade was a dud, fortunately. Subsequently he had assignments in Tirana, Albania, and Smyrna, which is today Izmir in Turkey- Q: It would have been under Turkey, too. HOLMES: It was in Turkey, but- Q: Not too long after the exodus of Greeks. HOLMES: But it was still called Smyrna at the time. Then his next assignment was in Bucharest, Rumania, and while there he married my mother, in Kansas, and they both returned to post together. Q: Your mother's background? HOLMES: My mother was also a Kansan, and actually it was kind of interesting. She was from Wichita, and she had met my father at the Kansas University, but where I guess he sought her out more was when her father, who after World War I was governor of Kansas for a couple of terms. In about 1921 or 1922, I can't recall the date exactly, there was a very severe winter, and the American Federation of Labor, Samuel Gompers' federation, Interview with Ambassador Henry Allen Holmes http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001561 Library of Congress struck - the miners struck - and there were some fatalities. There was not enough coal to heat various establishments, including old people's homes and hospitals, and there were some fatalities. So my grandfather, after talking with the labor union, called out the national guard to mine enough coal to fuel those establishments, and my dad was in the Kansas national guard and was one of the people who was called out to participate in this operation - which led to an early attempt at labor legislation well ahead of Taft-Hartley, called the Kansas Industrial Court Act, and my grandfather supported it all the way. It was sustained in the Kansas Supreme Court, went to the Supreme Court of the United States and was declared unconstitutional by a vote of five to four, with Taft casting the deciding vote against it. Q: This is William Howard Taft. HOLMES: William Howard Taft. My grandfather and he battled within the Republican Party. My grandfather was a progressive and a Bullmooser and had a very strong- Q: Any connection with William Allen White and all that? HOLMES: William Allen White was my grandfather's best friend, and they were editors and publishers together in Kansas. William Allen White had the Emporia Gazette, which was very well known, and my grandfather, after working his way up from being a war correspondent in the Spanish-American War and representing small Kansas newspapers, eventually arrived in Wichita and bought and developed the Wichita Beacon. He and White were very close friends, a long-time friendship. Q: Well, also, too, White was a Republican and a Bullmooser and the whole nine yards. HOLMES: Well, he and my grandfather went off to World War I together representing the Kansas Red Cross and the Kansas... I think it was the Salvation Army, but representing two organizations. They went off together. William Allen White wrote a book about it called The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me, and they had an interesting time in France Interview with Ambassador Henry Allen Holmes http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001561 Library of Congress visiting the Kansas national guard, and then my grandfather came back. I guess my grandfather stayed on briefly. Q: What was your grandfather's name. HOLMES: Henry Justin Allen. He came back, and William Allen White placed his name in nomination for governor of Kansas, and he won by acclamation. He never made a campaign speech. It is kind of unusual. Q: Well, can you tell about growing up as a Foreign Service kid? HOLMES: Yes. We didn't stay in Rumania. As I said, I was born in 1933. We didn't stay there very long after my birth - about five months. We returned to the United States, returned to Washington, where my father then became the assistant chief of protocol in a two-man political office that also had responsibility for international conferences and international aviation, and had that job for a number of years, until late in the '30s, probably 1938 or late '37, when he left the Foreign Service, took a job as vice president of the New York World's Fair, which was being organized at that time. Q: Grover Whelan. HOLMES: Grover Whelan was the sort of head guy, and my dad was responsible for negotiating the various bilateral agreements with those nations that would have pavilions at the New York World's Fair. Q: Did that bring you up to New York? HOLMES: That brought us to New York. We lived in New York for a couple of years, and then he stayed with the Fair, and then when the Fair was over, my father accepted a job as a vice president of General Mills and went off for a stint as their representative in Brazil. I used to kid him about selling Wheaties to the Brazilians. While there, World War II started. The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and my father came back. He had kept up Interview with Ambassador Henry Allen Holmes http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001561 Library of Congress his reserve commission in the Army since World War I, was a major, and within a week he was on duty at the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. Q: Where did you go to elementary school? HOLMES: I went to school in a number of places. I went to a school for a couple of years while my parents were at the World's Fair, a school called the Buckley School in New York City. Then I went out to Wichita, Kansas. We were there for a year, and I went to elementary school there in Wichita. Then when my parents went to Brazil, I went to a little military school in Tennessee, a place called Bloomington Springs, Tennessee, and then when they came back when the war started and my father went back in the Army, we came back to Washington, and I went to St. Alban's School there from the fifth through the eighth grade. Q: Well, particularly, what about St. Alban's School there. You went there when it would be about, what, 1942 or so? HOLMES: '42, that's correct. Yes, from the fall of '42 to the spring of '46. Q: Well, St. Alban's, of course, is a Washington institution. Could you talk about what you got out of it, the school there, and your impressions? HOLMES: Well, I had a great time at the school. It was academically rigorous, which was good for me. I remember starting Latin pretty early. In those days it was unusual. I studied Latin there in the seventh grade, and the usual courses of study that one followed. I played football and enjoyed that immensely, baseball, played soccer, liked sports, and I liked to sing. I sang in the choir, glee club at St. Alban's. Q: What about reading? Were there any books that grabbed you at the time? HOLMES: Well, I remember reading a lot of adventure books. I liked adventure stories, but I liked books about musicians, too, because at the time, I was very interested in music. In Interview with Ambassador Henry Allen Holmes http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001561 Library of Congress fact, I was taking piano lessons, even went to a piano camp in Vermont one summer, and that was a lot of fun.

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