Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project
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Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project RICHARD A. VIRDEN Interviewed by Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: March 7, 2011 Copyright 2021 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface Chapter 1. Origins. St. Cloud 1941–1959 Chapter 2. St. John’s University 1959–1963 Chapter 3. Washington, DC 1963–1966 Chapter 4. Thailand 1967–1969 Chapter 5. Saigon 1970–1971 Chapter 6. Belo Horizonte, Brazil 1972–1973 Chapter 7. Sao Paulo 1973–1974 Chapter 8. Washington 1974–1977 Chapter 9. Warsaw 1977–1980 Chapter 10. Bangkok 1980–1983 Chapter 11. National War College 1983–1984 Chapter 12. Office of American Republics Affairs 1984–1986 Chapter 13 Lisbon, Portugal 1986–1990 Chapter 14. Bucharest, Romania 1990–1993 Chapter 15. Warsaw, Poland 1994–1997 Chapter 16. Georgetown University 1997–1998 Chapter 17. European Bureau, State Department 1998–2000 Chapter 18. National War College faculty 2000–2002 Chapter 19. Brasilia 2002–2004 Chapter 20. Retirement 2004– Epilogue. A Media Journey: From Edward R. Murrow to Fake News 1 Preface In 2011, I was interviewed by Charles Stuart Kennedy for the Oral History Program of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training (ADST) and the Library of Congress. In my case, the interview was conducted by phone; the transcript of the five phone sessions is the core of this book. I have included here some of my later writings that expand on the subjects raised in this history. The added articles, updates, and parenthetical comments are shown in brackets. 2 Chapter 1. Origins. St. Cloud, 1941–1959 Q: When and where were you born? VIRDEN: I was born in St. Cloud, Minnesota, on July 24, 1941. Q: You want to talk about your family? How about on your father’s side? What do you know about them? VIRDEN: My dad’s name was Ralph Virden. He was born in 1920 in central Minnesota, in a small town called Waite Park. His father’s name was Andrew Virden. Andrew came to Minnesota as a young boy on an th “orphan train” from New York, around the turn of the 19 century. Q: That famous series of trains. Can you explain what that was? VIRDEN: Sure, these were boys from orphanages in New York City who were sent by train to the Midwest to work on farms. My grandfather was only six or seven at the time he made the trip, around 1900. We believe his father was an engineer who was killed in a train accident in upstate New York; Andrew did not know what happened to his mother, except that she died when he was quite young. Andrew had identification papers pinned to his back when he arrived in Minnesota, but they were eventually lost, so there’s no documented family record. He was not treated very well at the first farm where he was placed—the farmer wanted an older boy who could do more heavy lifting—but things worked out better when he was eventually able to move to another farm. Q: And this was your grandfather? VIRDEN: My grandfather on my father’s side, yes. Q: What did he do? He became a farmer, or what? VIRDEN: He worked on a farm for some time, then in a railroad yard in Waite Park. This was a shop where they painted train wagons. After some years there, there was an accident that caused him to lose his 3 hearing—and with it his job. The family was eventually awarded an insurance settlement, but the insurance company went broke and never paid any of it. After the accident, Andrew worked on a daily farm again for more than 15 years until he retired. Q: And how about his wife? VIRDEN: In 1915, Andrew married Clara Imdieke, who was born in Meire Grove, in west central Minnesota. Both her parents, Joseph and Elizabeth Imdieke, were from Germany originally. Meire Grove was a mostly German community, as were many of the nearby towns and villages. Q: Do you know anything about that settlement? VIRDEN: Yes, a little. Meire Grove was—and remains—primarily German. It’s now a village of about 350 people. My great grandfather, Joseph, was a farmer and also had a brick-making business; the brick house he built still stands. He also helped build the parish church, which remains in use today. The nearest town is called New Munich; it’s a very German area, that part of Minnesota. Q: Did they get involved in the Civil War at all? VIRDEN: No, my relatives were among the first settlers there, but they arrived after the Civil War. Q: Well, to get to your father, then, your father, tell us about him. VIRDEN: My dad, Ralph J. Virden, was born in 1920 and grew up during the Great Depression. He went to high school in St. Cloud and for a period was in the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps. He and my mother, who was from the nearby town of St. Augusta, were married in 1940. For part of the war, he helped build the Alaska Highway. He was not drafted for military service early on due to bad vision—he was blind in one eye—but was called up in late 1944. By that time, he and Mom had three young children at home. [Judy was born in 1942 and Carol in 1944; Tom did not come along until 1949]. 4 Dad went through basic training in Minnesota and was assigned to a military hospital in Colorado, where he worked until the war ended and a few months beyond. Q: How much education had he had? VIRDEN: He was a high school graduate. Q: What did he do after the war? VIRDEN: When the war ended, he resumed work as a nurse’s aide at the St. Cloud Veterans Hospital, where he continued in various capacities until his retirement more than thirty years later. To earn extra cash to raise our family of six, he also worked evenings and weekends pumping gas (gas was nineteen cents a gallon then!). He still found time to bowl once or twice a week, and well enough to be named to the local hall of fame. He was a championship cribbage player, too. Q: All right, on your mother’s side, what do you know about them? VIRDEN: My mother, whose maiden name was Marcella Trappen, was born in 1916. She still lives independently in the family home and, God willing, will celebrate her ninety-fifth birthday this July. [She did, and th her 100 , too! She lived until nearly 103]. Mom was born in St. Cloud and lived there as a young girl before moving to a farm outside the nearby town of St. Augusta, where she studied in a one-room schoolhouse through the eighth grade; times were tough, she was needed on the farm and so did not get the opportunity to go on to high school. Once her youngest child, my brother Tom, was old enough, Mom went to work outside the home as a seamstress, making life jackets and similar products. Since retiring she’s become a dedicated quilter; every member of the family has at least one of her works of art to treasure. My maternal grandmother, Rose Liesch, was born in Rice Lake, Wisconsin, to German immigrants. She married, John Trappen, who was also a native of Germany. John worked in granite sheds in the St. Cloud area until contracting stonecutter’s disease; he died in 1929, when my mother was twelve and her sister, Alvina, fifteen. 5 Q: Granite chips in the lungs, I guess. VIRDEN: Yes, exactly. Q: Did you grow up in St. Cloud? VIRDEN: Yes, I did. I went to Catholic grade school and high school, then a dozen miles away to St. John’s University, a liberal arts college founded in Collegeville by Benedictines in 1858, the same year Minnesota became a state. Q: You want to talk about, when you were a kid, what was St. Cloud like? VIRDEN: It was a kind of gritty, blue-collar town, but for us a very pleasant place to grow up in. Nobody we knew had a lot of money in those days and it did not seem to matter; we had a great time. We spent our free time playing games and sports of all kinds. In the summer we went swimming in a municipal pool but also in rock quarries outside the city. We played football and baseball whenever we could round up a quorum. We also hung out at the ballpark to watch the St. Cloud Rox, a Class C Northern League team and a farm club of the New York, later San Francisco, Giants. We saw a lot of future major leaguers, like Henry Aaron (who played for Eau Claire, in the same league), Orlando Cepeda, Willie Kirkland, Gaylord Perry and others on their way up. Sports, outdoor games, and John Philips Sousa concerts in the park were all part of growing up in that era. A friend from that time said to me recently that we had a Tom Sawyer-type boyhood. We felt that way, carefree. Q: Hockey, too? VIRDEN: No, I loved all the other sports, but hockey was just one my friends and I didn’t get into. Football, baseball, basketball, those were all big for us. Q: As a kid, did you have brothers, sisters? 6 VIRDEN: Yes, indeed, I have a brother and two sisters. I am the oldest, my brother the youngest. [As of 2020, all three of my siblings had already celebrated their golden wedding anniversaries; ours is coming up at the end of 2021.] Q: Your family, would you call them blue collar? VIRDEN: Yes, though we would probably not have used that or any other label.