Interview with Ambassador William Andreas Brown
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Library of Congress Interview with Ambassador William Andreas Brown The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project AMBASSADOR WILLIAM ANDREAS BROWN Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: November 3, 1998 Copyright 2004 ADST [Note: This interview has not been edited by Ambassador Brown.] Q: This is an interview with Ambassador William A. Brown. It is being done on behalf of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. I'm Charles Stuart Kennedy. Well, Bill, let's start at the beginning. Can you tell me when and where you were born and something about your family? BROWN: Alright. I was born on September 7, 1930, at the hospital in Winchester, Massachusetts, because there was no hospital in Lexington, Massachusetts, where I grew up. My family and I considered that Lexington, Massachusetts, was, indeed, “the birthplace of American liberty” - which was the town slogan. We thought that this was more than a slogan. The place of my birth imbued me with certain attitudes, given the fact that we considered that we were at the center of the American Revolution and that it all began there. In my early years I didn't realize that the Revolution began in other places as well and about at the same time. Secondly, I would say that I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. That is, I grew up in East Lexington, Massachusetts. There was quite a divide between the center of the town of Lexington, where the more affluent, establishment people lived, and those of us who Interview with Ambassador William Andreas Brown http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001330 Library of Congress were from East Lexington, on the Arlington County line. I just addressed my 50th high school reunion and mentioned this. My reference to it in these terms touched those others who were from East Lexington. I grew up in unusual circumstances. My parents were divorced when I was a baby. My father was from a nouveau riche family which had suffered reverses in the Depression. My mother was the daughter of a Danish immigrant workingman. Given the social attitudes of the time, my mother had no recourse, due to the Depression and so forth, but to move in with her widower father, who was a sort of surrogate father to me, a hard-working Danish man from the working class. So, although I had a formerly wealthy widowed grandmother who lived in the more affluent town center, I grew up in a working class milieu, in an area which was significantly Irish Catholic and Italian-American. This Italian section of Lexington was called, “Guineaville.” On the fringes of this area there was a small, Jewish community which was very poor and was called “Jewville.” So I grew up in the midst of all of these stereotypes, ethnic, religious, and so forth. Q: Were you raised a Catholic? BROWN: No. Q: I was going to say that there must have been quite a divide between the Catholic... BROWN: There was. Remember, this was not just Catholic. It was Irish Catholic in the Boston sense. That is to say that Jesuit priests visited the families of the parish. When I was a kid, I remember hearing stories about this. The Jesuits reportedly thundered from the pulpit of the Catholic parish that they knew that some of their parishioners were murderers who practiced contraception. Abortion wasn't even mentioned in those days, but people who used contraceptives were considered murderers and were considered guilty of sin. Interview with Ambassador William Andreas Brown http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001330 Library of Congress There was a very strong, anti-British background to all of this. This was very interesting to me when, much later in life, I dealt with British diplomats and lived in Leeds England for over a year. I went through Lexington High School. I didn't know this at the time but, for those conservative days, Lexington had a rather progressive school system. My classmates, once I reached high school and discovered the whole town, included the sons and daughters of some very accomplished people. They were professors at the universities in the Boston area, such as Harvard College, MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology], Tufts College, and so forth. So there were some remarkable people around Lexington. I said that I came from, shall I say, the wrong side of the tracks. Looking back on this time, I originally thought that I was going to be a military officer. An Italian neighbor of ours had fought in World War I. He had sons, but they didn't quite measure up to his standards. This neighbor had been impoverished between World Wars I and II but had been in the National Guard or the Army Reserve. When World War II came, he suddenly rose from the status of being a butcher in civilian like to that of full Colonel in the United States Army. He came back from World War II in glory and picked me as a sort of surrogate son in this respect. He was determined that I was going to go to West Point [U.S. Military Academy]. Q: May we go back just a bit? When you were in grammar or elementary school, what were your interests at that time? BROWN: I was quite sports-oriented. I was fortunate, through my mother and her friends, to become fond of reading quite early. Lexington was still significantly rural, although a suburb of Boston in those days. So there were plenty of woods and open fields in which to play Cowboys and Indians and so forth. In those days tennis was a popular sport, but the people I knew didn't play tennis. That was a wealthy man's sport. I was a caddy at the golf course, but I didn't play golf. I carried the golf clubs of the wealthy. [Laughter] So the sports I played included baseball, football, basketball, and track. Interview with Ambassador William Andreas Brown http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001330 Library of Congress Q: I assume that quite a bit of this was also organized, was it not? BROWN: Yes. Q: You didn't have Little Leagues and things like that... BROWN: There was no formal organization. It was sand lot baseball. I still bear a scar from playing ice hockey. That was played outdoors. In those days there was no easily available, indoor hockey rink. Lexington had quite a sports reputation, including championship baseball, basketball and ice hockey. We were very good in track and in baseball and football. Q: What sort of books were you reading? Q: Somewhere my mother had obtained a copy of the old “World Book of Knowledge,” published in about 1905. I still have it. Q: It consisted of about 20 volumes. I read it all the way through. BROWN: It was extraordinary. Early on, I became interested in military history. By the time I was in junior high school I was reading a great deal about the history of the American Civil War. Of course, Lexington had its own history and held annual parades on April 19 to commemorate Paul Revere's ride. Houses were marked with signs saying that this was where Paul Revere stayed, and this was the old tavern he visited. Lexington was steeped in history, and there were artifacts from the period of the American Revolution in the buildings and so forth. History was very much in my reading. Q: The statue of the “Minute Man...” BROWN: Oh, yes. Interview with Ambassador William Andreas Brown http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001330 Library of Congress Q: Must have permeated the atmosphere of the place. Although there was still some anti- British feeling, you must have been old enough to begin to feel the impact of World War II. How did that affect you? BROWN: At my age World War II meant that my mother went to work. Remember, my parents were divorced. My mother and I were living with my Danish widower grandfather, who was a hard-working man. With the manpower shortage at the time, my mother went to work in a cookie factory, on a cookie assembly line. I myself was able to find work, and I started out making 15 cents an hour, working on local farms. That was a real taste of farm work. The years from 1941 to 1944 involved rough farm work, when I worked down on my knees, weeding. The employers really pushed us. As I said, I started work at 15 cents an hour and felt damned lucky to get that. World War II meant that my grandfather, like other neighbors, worked for the Office of Civil Defense. He was issued a helmet, an arm band, and a shovel. Meanwhile, my father, whom I rarely saw, was in his late 30s. He was so gung ho in support of the war that he managed to get a commission as a chemical warfare officer. All of the males of the right age went off to military service, including Dickie Cook, a guy who was a sort of role model for me. Dickie was the son of the local fire chief. He lived about two houses away from us. Dickie Cook got a commission in the Army Air Corps right out of high school. He had the right stuff, and they rushed him through mathematics and so forth. He became a Bombardier. He came back, years later, with a different attitude toward the Air Force. On a bombing run over Japan his plane was attacked.