The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project DAVID C. SUMMERS Interviewed by: David Reuther Initial Interview Date: July 26, 2012 Copyright 2015 ADST FOREIGN SERVICE POSTS Krakow, Poland, vice consul 1975-1976 Warsaw, Poland, third secretary, political section 1976-1977 State Department Operations Center, junior watch officer 1977-1979 State Department Office of Congressional Relations (H), March-May 1979 staff assistant TDY Warsaw Poland during visit of Pope John Paul II May-June 1979 Beijing, China, second secretary, political section 1983-1985 (external affairs) Bangkok, Thailand, second secretary, political section 1986-1988 (political-military officer) Stockholm, Sweden, administrative section, first secretary, 1989-1993 data processing center chief State Department Office of Caribbean Affairs (CAR), 1993-1995 Dominican Republic desk officer Budapest, Hungary, political counselor 1996-1999 INTERVIEW Q: Good morning. It is 26 July. This is a foreign affairs oral history program with David Summers. We are in Washington conducting this interview. It is being conducted under the auspices of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. I am David Reuther. Dave, let’s start out, can you give us a background of where you were born and raised. 1 SUMMERS: I was born in Lexington, Kentucky in 1949 into a family that had been in Kentucky for about 200 years. I was reminded of this recently when I told a friend about my grandfather who went to the St. Louis Exhibition by train in 1904. He got married in 1905 and went by train to Washington DC which was the honeymoon destination for Kentucky, like Niagara Falls. He never went anyplace else in his whole life. He died at age 96 in 1969. He never went north; he never went south, except to visit his family. He was a farmer. So I was born into a pretty sedentary family in Kentucky. Q: On the paternal side they had this long history in Kentucky what did your father do? SUMMERS: My father was an English teacher. By the time I was born he was at the University of Kentucky. When I was 10 we moved to Ohio. Q: What about your mother’s people? SUMMERS: Mom was born in Bourbon County, Kentucky, a town called Millersburg. Part of the farm that my grandfather farmed was first bought for British pounds. They went there in 1775. Thanks to Google I recently found a letter from Daniel Boone written when he was staying at my ancestor’s place. My ancestors got there first, but of course Boone came overland on the Cumberland Road and they floated down the Ohio River, so their trip was easier. They were settled in Carlisle, Pennsylvania when they bought land from Lord Fairfax and went to Kentucky. Q: So these were English settlers. SUMMERS: Yes, they would have been English settlers when they went. Q: Let’s start off by talking about, you moved when you were ten, but before that time what was life like in Lexington? SUMMERS: Oh gosh, it was like those things you read on the internet where they admonish you to pass it on if you remember: skate keys, drinking from the hose, going to the store for ice cream because we didn’t have a freezer that would hold ice cream. I have an idealized view of my childhood growing up in a little neighborhood where the children roamed freely. We came home at dark in the summertime and we had a lot of adventures that were of our own making, but didn’t really go very far, just a few blocks from our house. I remember when I got a bicycle and rode my bike into another neighborhood I thought I was in strange territory. I couldn’t believe I had done it by myself. All the kids disappeared on Sunday morning to attend a different church, but we were back together again on Sunday afternoon. All the parents on the block felt free to discipline all the kids, but also to indulge them. Q: Now your father was an English professor at the University of Kentucky? SUMMERS: Right. 2 Q: How big was that campus at that time? SUMMERS: Well it seemed big to me, and I think it was the biggest school in Kentucky. I suppose it might have had 10,000 students, something like that. Q: Now you would have started elementary school in Kentucky, this is the period of the Korean War which you probably wouldn’t remember. SUMMERS: Oh yes, I do remember it. I suppose this may be my first memory of a foreign country. The man across the street was in the army. His name was Fred Rankin. While he went to the Korean War, his wife Irmgard, who was a German war bride, lived across the street with their two children. Our families were good friends. When Fred came back from the war he brought us zori shoes from Korea, flip flops. They were the first anyone had ever seen. We all loved them. That was my first knowledge of Asia, that and the occasional move among the neighborhood kids to dig a hole in someone’s backyard with the goal of reaching China. Then that next year, my family went to Mexico on my father’s sabbatical. The deal was that after seven years at the University of Kentucky, a teacher could either take a leave for a year at half salary or half a year at full salary. We went to spend the whole year in Mexico. That was the same year that the Rankins were reassigned to Japan. I remember debating with Karin Rankin which of us would travel farther. My parents told me it would take us a week to drive to Mexico. Karin’s family would take two days to fly to Japan. We agreed that planes went faster than cars, but that a week was much longer than two days. We decided that Kentucky was equidistant between Mexico and Japan. No map was consulted. Q: Where did you go in Mexico? SUMMERS: We went to Mexico City. Q: What did your father do? SUMMERS: He wrote a novel called The Weather of February. I entered the first grade at the American School, and my brother entered the fifth grade. Mexico’s national day was soon upon us, and he had an assignment to draw the Mexican flag. I remember feeling relief that first graders didn’t have to do that, because it was hard to draw an eagle on a rock with cactus eating a snake. Our mother taught first grade at a school called Colegio Colombia, a bilingual school not far from ours. Q: What was the American school like then? It wasn’t just Americans was it? SUMMERS: I think it was about half Americans and half Mexicans. Compared to the school in Kentucky, it was impressive. It had a big fence around it, and it had 12 grades. I had been just to kindergarten, and I walked one block by myself to school. This time I rode on a bus which was pretty exciting. 3 Sometimes I think back to this period when I try to figure out why I became interested in foreign languages when my parents basically were not. I think it could date back to the trauma of my first day of first grade in Mexico. By mistake they put me in a class for Spanish speakers who would slowly learn English, rather than the class for English speakers who would slowly learn Spanish. I couldn’t understand a thing – the teacher and students seemed to babble at me with growing impatience. I had learned to count to a hundred, and decided to count to myself. If my parents didn’t fetch me by then, I would run away. I counted to about 30 when I decided they weren’t coming until afternoon and that I might as well leave right then. When the teacher’s back was turned I dashed out of the room. I was like the little gingerbread man. I hid in the bushes by the fence and made my way to the gate, which was guarded by a pensioner. From my hiding place, I could see the teacher’s high heels next to the old man’s boots. When the time seemed right, I made a break for it, clearing the gate and running howling down the street towards the school where my mother was teaching. They took chase, but were no match for me that day. I don’t remember learning Spanish but I do remember the day my parents gave me a tiny stuffed dog when I acted as the interpreter at a store where they were trying to buy automobile tires. I had no idea what I said that helped them, but I suppose that the experience of overcoming the strangeness of a foreign culture became a pleasurable challenge. Q: Now what year was it? SUMMERS: That would have been 1955. Q: Now you gave me a note about the Weekly Reader in ’56 – SUMMERS: That must relate to my earliest political awareness. My friend Polly Bacon was a year older than I was and her third grade class read The Weekly Reader. She showed me an article about President Eisenhower’s dog, which was a Weimaraner. I was in awe that Polly could read the words “Eisenhower” and “Weimaraner.” I became an Eisenhower fan instantly. I thought my parents should vote for Eisenhower based on the strength of Polly Bacon’s reading prowess. I was deeply disappointed when I questioned them and learned that they didn’t plan to vote for Eisenhower.