Interview with Ambassador George Quincey Lumsden

Library of Congress Interview with Ambassador George Quincey Lumsden The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project AMBASSADOR GEORGE QUINCEY LUMSDEN Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: January 11, 2000 Copyright 2006 ADST [Note: This interview has not been edited by Ambassador Lumsden] Q: Today is January 11, 2000. This is an interview with George Quincey Lumsden. This is being done on behalf of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training and I'm Charles Stuart Kennedy. Do you go by George? LUMSDEN: Actually, I am a “Junior.” I sort of let go of the “Junior” (It's still in my signature.) after my father passed on. But having exactly the same name as my father, my mother didn't want to say “George” and have two people answer, so I became Quincey. It's a slightly strange name. Growing up in the part of northern New Jersey that I did, no kid on the block was going to let it go. They sort of taunted me with it. I have responded to “Quincey” ever since. Q: I am Charles Stuart Kennedy, Junior. I go by “Stu” or “Stuart.” Let's have at it. When and where were you born and can you tell me something about your family? Interview with Ambassador George Quincey Lumsden http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001395 Library of Congress LUMSDEN: Okay. I was born a child of the Depression. I was born in September 19, 1930 at Morningside Hospital in Montclair, New Jersey. My father at that time was working for the Bell Telephone laboratories, then located on West Street in New York. He had a master's degree in forestry from Cornell University and made the princely sum of $28.50. Some weeks, he worked only three and then four days. Then things picked up. When I was very young, we moved to Maplewood, New Jersey only 16 miles from Times Square. At that time, we still had an icebox that you got your drinking water from, except on Fridays when your mother had bought a fresh fish and put it on top of the ice to stay cool for dinner that night, and the water tasted kind of funny. The coal was delivered by horse. The milk was delivered by horse. The only foreign language that I thought existed until I was about age seven was southern Italian by the immigrants who were coming around. So, that is what in the mid 1930s life was like 16 miles from Times Square. Q: What was your mother's background? LUMSDEN: My mother was born in Lawrenceburg, Indiana. Her parents met in Indiana. My grandfather on her side was from a family that had come out to Indiana early in the 19th century. He was born about 1858 or 1859 just at the cusp of the Civil War. My grandmother had a touch of Native American in her from Nebraska. I think it was Crow or something. But she was the descendent of Sam Dickie, who was a henchman of Daniel Boone's, who went through the Cumberland Gap in the 1700s and had been there a long, long time. My father was born in Brookline, Massachusetts. Both of them were born in the year 1901. He was the first member of his family to be born in this country. His mother and father had immigrated from the United Kingdom. His older brother was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His older sister was born back in England. The name Lumsden is a pure Scot's name. My grandfather always used to sit me on his knee and tell me, “Remember, lad, you must always be true to your clan and ne'er trust an English man.” Of course, he eliminated Interview with Ambassador George Quincey Lumsden http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001395 Library of Congress English women because he married one! I can remember being taken by my mother and father down to Georgia where the Battle of Stone Mountain was fought. That is where my father told me, “Son, this is where your mother's ancestors hid behind rocks and took pot shots at mine. The big difference between them was, mine wore shoes.” I was an only child, probably as a result of the Depression. I was very, very fortunate growing up in very definitely middle class surroundings. My grandmother on my mother's side did have some land in Nebraska which they sold, which permitted me instead of going to public high school after I finished junior high school in Maplewood, New Jersey to be sent to Deerfield Academy in Deerfield, Massachusetts. Q: Before we move to Deerfield, let's talk about the public schools in New Jersey. Can you talk about getting that early education, your interest, and how the schools operated? LUMSDEN: I think I mentioned once that the only foreign language I ever heard was Southern Italian at that time from Calabria, Sicily, Naples, in that area. A couple of my friends in the early grade school years were Leo and Davio Mafe. They were great playmates. I think it was between the third the fourth grade when my parents moved to a different house in the same town, so the elementary school district changed and suddenly I was from a rather mixed background The first school, by the way, was integrated. We had 10 15 African American students, lots of Italian students, and then the mixture of white Anglo Saxon. We moved into a more upscale neighborhood where all of the students were white, most either Anglo Saxon or Jewish. That was the social strata. I will admit, at that time, my interest in things foreign was limited to the grand excitement of us getting into World War II and Pearl Harbor. I do clearly remember my parents and most all of their friends, particularly down in the town of Maplewood, a lot of the shopkeepers were of German or Italian extraction, but everybody in the town was rather stridently opposed to the United States having anything to do with this damned European war. The feeling was very negative in 1940/1941. Of course, all that flipped over entirely after Pearl Harbor. I can remember the day very, very well. I had gone with my friends to the Cameo Theater Interview with Ambassador George Quincey Lumsden http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001395 Library of Congress in South Orange, New Jersey to see a wonderful movie, Sergeant York with Gary Cooper. When we came out of the theater, we were told that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor and that we were in the war. Our immediate reaction, age 10 12, was, “Gee, that's great!” We all went and played “Let's kill Germans and Japs” in the backyard. In my family, there was no overriding interest in being involved directly, except that they did get involved. My father's younger brother was in the 29th Blue Grey Division here. He hit the beach in Normandy and is now buried at St. Laurent Sur Mer. I visited his grave several times. Q: They took a terrible beating. LUMSDEN: Yes. Q: A little before the war started, what was the table conversation about, particularly on Roosevelt? Was it “That man in the White House” or was it “Our god in the White House?” LUMSDEN: In spite of the fact that my father only was pulling down $28.50 a week to start with. That improved considerably later, both his family and my mother's family from Indiana were rock Republicans. It wasn't so much “That man in the White House,” particularly after we got into the war, but it was “We've got to figure out some way to get the Republican Party back on its feet. It's doing everything wrong.” I would say that throughout their lives, they never wavered one bit. I've been a cross voter all my life. But particularly in that part of northern New Jersey at that time, the Republican Party in that part of suburbia, which just at the same time as was in New York, we were getting all sorts of very, very left wing movements going on. There is a movie, Rock the Cradle. That sort of stuff stimulated more of the rock ribbed Republican reaction. Q: In New York City, there was a very strong leftist movement, particularly in part of the Jewish community there. LUMSDEN: Yes. Interview with Ambassador George Quincey Lumsden http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001395 Library of Congress Q: During the war, as a kid, were you reading the papers and getting a good sense of geography? LUMSDEN: That is true, yes. I won't say that this sense of geography was leading me to get involved in foreign affairs, but the war and the course of the war was of great interest to me. Geography was important. My uncle by marriage, my mother's sister's husband, was Joseph Newman Wenger, who was instrumental in the organizing of the Japanese code breaking. He was the first commanding officer of the Naval Security Station at Ward Circle there. He was the first member of the U.S. Navy to become an admiral with a communications designator. I can remember seeing as we visited Washington that he had the initial tapes that came off the machines here in Washington from Pearl Harbor saying, “We are under attack. This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill.” So, I held that in my hands. So, that was a very broadening time for me.

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