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1 the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project MARY A. WRIGHT Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: May 11, 2003 Copyright 2004 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Background Born in Oklahoma; raised in Arkansas al-Mart Hendricks College; University of Arkansas U.S. Army/Navy Career 196,-1976 omen.s Army Corps - U.S. Netherlands /reece - U.S. Navy 1970-1971 2ietnam Fort Chaffee - 2ietnam refugees Post-Military 1976-1973 Foreign Service E5am inter Olympic /ames 19,0 Resumed U.S. Army Service 1971-1977 Fort Bragg - teaching Civil Affairs School - 19,2 /renada Panama - Southern Command 19,5-19,7 Cuban prisoners of war (/renada) Direct Combat Probability Coding [DCPC? Entered Foreign Service - 19,7 Managua, Nicaragua - Consular/Political Officer 19,7-19,9 Sandinistas 2isas Corruption Contras Security 0 Environment Oliver North St. /eorge.s, /renada - Political Officer 19,9-1991 U.S. intervention Cuba Naval ar College - U.S. Army Reserve Officer 1991 Une5ploded ordinance issue Tashkent, UAbekistan - Political Officer 1991 Environment /overnment Economy State Department - Arms Control 1991 Russians /eneva conference State Department - Political-Military Affairs - International Security 1992-1990 UN peacekeeping (UNOSOM) Somalia United Nations Operations in Somalia [UNOSOM? 1990-1991 Operations Military operations (U.S. and UN) arlords Somalia police Aideed ar CBlackhawk DownD Programs ended Bishkek, EyrgyAstan - Administrative Officer 1991-1996 Embassy building Environment Economy Furts Freetown, Sierra Leone - DCM 1996-199, Revolutionary United Front [RUF? IMF funds Diamonds Conflict 1 Evacuation of 1,100 people Environment Security Refugees Foreign Service nationals [FSNs? est African Security Force (ECOMO/) Palikir, Micronesia - Chief of Mission 199,-2000 Hawaii - Office of the /overnor 2000 Pearson program Asian Development Bank meeting Eabul, Afghanistan - Political Officer 2001-2002 Reopening of embassy Environment Living conditions /overnment Security International Security Force [ISAF? Heroism Award CIA Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia - DCM 2002 Environment Soviet remnants /overnment Resignation (Reason for) Dissent cable IraH A5is of Evil Palestine E-mails Attachment - Letter of Resignation INTERVIEW Q: I$m interviewing Ann Wright. Do you have a middle initial that you use or not( RI/HTI ell, my given name is Mary Annette right but I.ve always gone by Ann right. 2 Q: Alright. Ann, let$s start )ind of at the beginning. When and where were you born( RI/HTI I was born in Durant, Oklahoma on July 22, 1916. Q: Can you tell me something first about your father, the bac)ground, going bac) a distance( His name was( RI/HTI His name was John D. right. He was born in a little town in Oklahoma also, called Adair, Oklahoma K up in the northeast corner of the state. In high school my father and his brothers played football. He and his brothers were big and tough. According to an aunt, the other football teams in the area knew not to mess with the right brothers. My aunt said that if the brothers didn.t get into a fight while at school each day, then they would fight each other on the way home from school. After graduating from high school, he worked in small banks in Oklahoma. He joined the Army Air Corps during orld ar II and served in the Pacific. His best stories were about serving with /eneral MacArthur. He brought back some pig tusks from some where in the Pacific and some U.S. dollars that had CHA AIID printed on them. He said he won the dollars in a poker game in Hawaii. After the war he sold automobiles with an uncle in infield, Eansas. Several years later we moved to Southwest City, Missouri where he headed the bank. In 1951 he was named the President of the Bank of Bentonville, Arkansas. e moved to Arkansas when I was eight. Q: Do you )now anything about the Wright bac)ground, where they came from( RI/HTI A little bit. I.m sad to say not as much as I should know and want to know. Apparently his family came from Illinois and North Carolina and my mother.s from Mississippi via North Carolina. Q: Did your father go to college or university( RI/HTI No, he was not fortunate enough to be able to go to college. But he was a very smart guy. He was able to parlay his work in small banks in Oklahoma initially as a bank teller before orld ar II and his e5periences in the military into a very successful banking career. Dad epitomiAed the successful self-educated Midwesterner. Q: This is of course was very much the pattern, that people of his generation often were not college graduates. RI/HTI Fes. Q: How about your mother( What was her maiden name and where did they come from( RI/HTI My mother.s maiden name was Juanita Faye Park. She too was from Oklahoma, but from the southeastern part of Oklahoma and from an even smaller town 3 than my father K a little town called Blue, Oklahoma which was near Durant, Oklahoma. Mother came from a very modest family. She and her brothers and sisters picked cotton in the summer. Her family made their own lye soap in a huge iron pot that bubbled outdoors, had a huge vegetable garden and raised chickens and pigs for family consumption. I can remember as a child going to visit my mother.s family and still having to use the outhouse perched above the Blue creek. My mother, remarkably, was able to go to college on a women.s basketball scholarship. Q: How wonderful. RI/HTI Fes. Back in those days, in the L20s and L00s, was kind of the heyday of women.s sports. If you remember Babe Didrikson and Q: Oh, Babe Zachariah Didri)son, yes. RI/HTI That.s right. ell, my mother beat Babe Didrikson.s. Q: In what( RI/HTI In basketball. Q: Because she was a golfer and RI/HTI Babe got her start, though, in basketball. She played basketball, as did my mother, and then both my mother and she coached basketball teams in Te5as. It was through the scholarship at a small women.s college in Durant, Oklahoma that my mother was able to get a college education. She then she became a schoolteacher and a coach. She taught for several years in MesHuite, Te5as (near Dallas) where her teams played against Babe.s. Just before orld ar II Mother took a high school teaching job in /rove, Oklahoma in northeastern Oklahoma. My Dad was working in the bank in /rove and that.s where they met. Q: What was the name of your mother$s college( RI/HTI It was Oklahoma Presbyterian College for omen, OPC. The OPC Cardinals were the American Athletic Union (AAU) champions for four years in a row and won more games in a row than any other women.s basketball team in the history of the sport. Because of this record the entire basketball team was inducted in 2000 into the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame. It was the first time an entire team was ever inducted into the Sports Hall of Fame. Only two members of the team were still alive in 2000, but family of each of the team members attended in their honor. Twenty members of my mother.s family attended the induction. hat a gala event - over one thousand people gathered to honor sports figures of Oklahoma. Q: Well, that$s a wonderful story. How did sports translate when they got down to you( 4 RI/HTI That.s a good Huestion. Unfortunately there was a great demise in women.s sports for America after the 1900s. hen I went to high school in the early L60s and then college in the late L60s, America had not yet embarked upon the renaissance of women.s sports. Title Nine that mandated eHual opportunities in sports for women didn.t take effect until later. However, I did play a lot of sports in the back yard of our little home in Arkansas. Mother and Daddy would be in the backyard pitching for kids in the neighborhood and teach us to play baseball. Our back yard became the focal point for all the sports activities of the neighborhood. I was a natural sportswoman and was as good as the boys in my neighborhood, in fact better than most of them. I loved baseball, basketball, football and tennis. It made me very mad that my guy buddies got to play Little League baseball and I didn.t. e would practice together all week and then they would get to put on their uniforms and play in front of all the parents and friends. I was jealousM Q: 0ou grew up where( We$re tal)ing about by the time you were getting ready to go to elementary school. RI/HTI I went to elementary, junior high and high school in Bentonville, Arkansas. At the time Bentonville had no claim to fame, but now Bentonville is world-famous because it.s the headHuarters of al-Mart. Just down the road in northwest Arkansas is Jones Trucking Line, one of the largest interstate trucking firms and Tyson Chicken. I have been in some very remote areas of the world during my Foreign Service career and have found Tyson.s froAen chickens in many of those isolated areas. Q: Oh, my god. RI/HTI Fes, and in fact one of the great stories about al-Mart.s beginnings concerns my Dad. Dad was the town banker in Bentonville when this young whippersnapper named Sam alton moved to town and had an idea about having not one little five-and- dime store, but maybe two or three of them.
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