The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project
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The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project DONNA MARIE OGLESBY Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial Interview Date: July 1, 2016 Copyright 2018 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Background Born in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, on October 22, 1946 BA in Political Science, Washington College 1964-1968 MA in International Affairs, Columbia University 1968-1970 Entered the Foreign Service 1970 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil—Assistant Cultural Affairs Officer 1971-1972 Washington, D.C.—Deputy Desk Officer to Brazil & Mexico 1972-1974 São Paulo Biennial Counter cultural art Duke Ellington Vienna, Austria—Assistant Cultural Affairs Officer for Exchanges 1975-1977 Fulbright Program Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries San Salvador, El Salvador—Cultural Affairs Officer 1977-1979 Archbishop Romero Fourteen families (El Salvador’s oligarchy) Political revolution/Beginning of civil war Asuncion, Paraguay—Public Affairs Officer 1979-1982 Human rights Expression of the press Washington, D.C.—Branch Chief of Latin American Wireless File 1982 Washington, D.C.—Director of the International Youth Exchange 1982-1984 Initiative Disabled student exchange programs Washington, D.C.—Deputy Director of Latin American Affairs 1984-1986 1 Washington, D.C.—Director of Latin American Affairs 1986-1987 Community college exchange programs Bangkok, Thailand—Minister Counselor for Public Affairs 1988-1992 Respect of Thai beliefs Coup and counter-coup Gulf War Washington, D.C.—Counselor of USIA 1993-1996 Reorganization of USIA Retirement January 1996 St. Petersburg, Florida—Eckerd College (Diplomat in Residence) 1997-2017 INTERVIEW Q: Today is the 1st of July 2016. Interview with Donna Oglesby. Being done by telephone and I’m in Arlington and she is on Cape Cod. Okay, Donna. Let’s start at the beginning. When and where were you born? OGLESBY: I was born on October 22, 1946 in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. Q: Just to get an idea, first we’ll do your father’s side and then your mother’s side. What was the background of your father’s family? OGLESBY: My father’s family is Pennsylvania Dutch. He traces our family back to pre- revolutionary days in Pennsylvania. They were mostly farmers until his father worked for the railroad. My mother’s family is largely Irish. Her great-grandfather came from Ireland in the late 1900s as did her great-grandmother; we are a newer immigrant family. Again, her grandfather, I mean most of that side of the family went to New York and to Philadelphia as part of the large Irish potato famine immigration; her father also worked on the railroad. Q: So, your father’s side first. What sort of education did he have? OGLESBY: My father was caught up in World War II like most people of his age. He didn’t go to college initially. He went into the Army and he became a pilot; my father was an Army pilot during World War II. He served in the European theater. He flew artillery spotter planes, small fixed-wing aircraft. When he returned from the war, I was born in the first wave of boomers. My father was in the reserves and returned to the military when the Korean War began. He then had a full Army career until retiring in 1967. My mother was college-educated during that period. She went to Westchester State College which was a teacher college at that time. During the War, she drove ambulances for Valley Forge 2 Military Hospital. Phoenixville, her home town, is the little town right outside of Valley Forge. During the whole war period, my mother and my grandmother, actually, were very involved as volunteers with Valley Forge. My father got a college education later. While we were in the military, my father all but finished his BA through the University of Maryland program. They always had large overseas operations that a lot of the military took advantage of. Q: Did you live the life of an Air Force brat? OGLESBY: I’m an Army brat. Yes, I certainly did. I was five when my father went back into the military; he was assigned to Ft. Sill, Oklahoma where he learned how to fly helicopters in addition to his fixed-wing certification. He became a flight instructor at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. We lived there until I was seven and then my father was assigned to Korea. He didn’t get to Korea. They pulled him off the boat in Japan because they needed a pilot in Japan as part of the occupation forces. And we were able to join him there. Instead of being separated from my father for a tour of duty, we were only separated for about eight months until we could get ourselves on a troop ship to Japan. I lived in Japan from the second grade to the fifth grade. Q: Where in Japan? OGLESBY: First we were in Yokohama for several months; then my father was assigned to Camp Zama outside of Tokyo. We lived in a military housing area called Sagamihara. Q: What were your impressions of being a kid in that environment? OGLESBY: I think it made a huge impression on me. We knew there was another country on the other side of the fence. We had some interaction with Japanese children through sports. I was also a Brownie then; many of our badges were focused on Japanese arts: making Japanese dolls; working on Bonsai, and Ikebana. I was well aware at a very early age of the differences in people and their cultures and their art forms and I think that made a huge impression on me. Q: Yeah. It would have been impossible for it not to. OGLESBY: Absolutely, nothing in my parents’ attitudes towards Japan were in any way negative at all. My parents took us on road trips all the time. We went to Mt. Fuji, Kamakura, all the shrines in the vicinity of Tokyo. My mother was a teacher, after all; she saw our time in Japan as a learning experience. I remember my brothers who were toddlers at the time disappearing in Kamakura. We eventually found them surrounded by Japanese who were simply touching their blond hair. Mutual amazement, I think. Q: That’s a great thing. Kamakura, so Daibutsu was there, wasn’t it? OGLESBY: Yes, exactly. I was raised Catholic; my father’s family was Baptist. So, early on I knew about religious differences. Buddhism and Shintoism were simply other religions to me. Q: Was there with your father coming from a farming community how important was religion there? One thinks of the Amish but… 3 OGLESBY: My father’s elder brother could speak Pennsylvania Dutch as did my grandfather. We had family connections to farms around Kutztown and in the Lancaster area. During our summer vacations we visited our farming relatives for summer picnics. The fun part was making ice cream from the milk we’d taken from the cows. A less fun part was plucking chickens; the boys had to learn how to wring their necks and girls did the plucking. I remember going to the farmer’s market with my grandfather and he would get in long discussions in Pennsylvania Dutch. I have never thought of it that way before, but even as a kid in Pennsylvania, I was aware that there were different communities with different languages and different ways of living. Q: How you were you in school? OGLESBY: How was I in school? Q: How did you do? OGLESBY: I was brilliant. Are you kidding? I was very good in school. I was in the honor society. My schooling was here and there and hither and yon. I did first grade in Oklahoma. Part of second grade in Pennsylvania, the rest of second grade, third and fourth grade in Japan. Fifth, six, seventh and eighth grade in Maryland, and then in the middle of my freshman year in high school, we were assigned to Ankara, Turkey. I was in Turkey through my junior year and then we were assigned to New Jersey for my senior year in high school. I then went to Washington College on Eastern shore of Maryland; I spent my junior year abroad in Hawaii learning Japanese. I was awarded an East West Center Fellowship to be able to do that. The following summer I studied in Japan. I returned to Washington College for my senior year. Then on the basis of my Japanese, won a full scholarship to Columbia University for my master’s in international affairs. I was a very good student. At Washington College I won the George Washington Medal at graduation for the student most likely to succeed. Q: I take it you were a reader. OGLESBY: Yes. I was a big reader; I still am. Because we lived in places without television or even phones sometimes. I remember reading all the time. The only appointment radio hour I ever remember was “Our Miss Brooks” which came on Armed Forces Radio at a certain time. I don’t even remember when it was, but I remember that was the only thing that I stayed up late to listen to while we were in Japan. There was no television and generally there was nothing on the radio. Turkey was much the same. I lost years of connection to American popular music. All those years as a teenager in Turkey, I worked part time during the summers in the post library. One summer I recall getting totally into the American Civil War; I read everything on the shelves. I was fascinated by the gritty Civil War photographs, particularly of Lincoln who I adored. I think that immersion in reading was my escape, my fun, and my everything.