The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project AMBASSADOR ROBERT WILLIAM FARRAND Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: March 28, 2001 Copyright 200 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Background Born and raised in New York State Mt. Saint Mary%s College, Emmetsburg, MD U.S. Navy,19.7,1901 U.S. Naval Academy, instructor Entered the Foreign Service in 1901 2uala 3umpur, Malaysia4 5SO6Cons6Econ off. 1901,1900 United Malay National Org. 7UM O8 Chinese 9ietnam CIA Rubber Environment State Department4 FSI, Russian language training 1900,1908 Moscow, USSR4 Consular Officer 1908,1970 Brezhnev Hippies Environment 25B State Department4 Economic Bureau 1970,1972 Steel White House Relations Prague, Czechoslovakia4 Economic Officer 1972,197. Economy Soviets U.S. interests Communists 1 Environment Moscow, USSR4 Chief, US Commercial Office 1970,1978 U.S. Commercial Representation Relations 25B State Department4 Soviet Desk Officer 1978,1980 Soviet economy ational War College 1980,1981 Marine Corps Comments on EAperience State Department4 East European Affairs 1881,1983 Poland Embassies Relations Prague, Czechoslovakia4 Deputy Chief of Mission 1983,198. Pentecostals 5erman Refugees Czechs and Slovaks Dissidents Helsinki Accord State Department4 Foreign Career Assignments 198.,1987 Process Problems Women and Minorities State Department4 Human Rights Bureau 1987,1989 Palestinians Africa Soviets 3atin America Ambassador to Papua, New 5uinea 1990,1993 Environment U.S. Interests Australians Security 5eography Peace Corps Solomon Islands 2 Foreigners Religions Industrial College of the Armed Forces 7ICAF8 1993,199. Deputy Commandant State Department4 Inspection Corps 199.,1997 Personnel Policy Post Inspections Embassy Security Brcko, Bosnia4 International Administrator 1997,2000 Dayton Peace Accords Peace Implementation Council Ethnic 5roups Environment Economy International Staff Reconstruction Porsavina Corridor Objectives International Police Task Force International Representation Muslims Security Conflict U.S. Military May Day Resettlement Process Elections Bosnian,Serbian,Croatian USAID INTERVIEW $: Today is the 28th of March, 2001. This is an interview with Robert (illiam Farrand and you go by (illiam, so by Bill. All right, to start with I wonder if you could just tell me when and where you were born and something about your family. FARRA DC The place I was born is about as far north as you can go in the Middle Atlantic States. I was born in a town called Watertown in the year 1931 and I was the first of siA. 3 $: (atertown, what, which state- FARRA DC New York. There%s a Watertown, Massachusetts4 you%re right. This was Watertown, New York. A small city probably at the time sized at 30,000 , something like that , back in the Depression, just after. $: Born in 1.30- FARRA DC D31. $: 12ay, tell me first about your father. (hat3s his bac2ground and his family bac2ground and what was he doing- FARRA DC My father was the younger of two sons of William and Maude Farrand. Her maiden name, his mother, was Maude Parminter, Nancy Maude Parminter. That name Parminter has always intrigued me because in the northern part of New York State there are a number of French names that seem to have been anglicized. I suspect that Farrand itself may be an anglicized French name. There is a city in France called Clermont, Ferrand about which I have a theory. My father would never satisfy me on the point about our European origins. My mother, an Irish American, was always Euite ready to tell us that we children were Irish4 but my father would only say Fyou%re an American.G When I would press him by saying, FDad, that isn%t enough,G and he%d reply, FThat%s all you need. You%re an American.G FAmericanG was enough for Dad. He never strayed from that line all his life. He was born in 1908 in a small town in northern New York called Savannah, around the Finger 3akes region. He was one of two. His father and mother, to the best of my knowledge, were Congregationalists as was my dad. My grandfather, William Farrand, was a jeweler, gunsmith, and watchmaker. Both he and my father were physically tall men, much taller than I grew to be. My dad graduated from high school just before the FCrashG 7of 19298. He was born with club feet. $: 4es, those are the two professions that really call for precision wor2. FARRA DC Without Euestion. May I indulge in a small digressionH $: Sure. FARRA DC I know from personal eAperience that a child can remember things from three years old. I was three years old when my paternal grandfather, the watchmaker, died in 1937. I clearly remember standing at his elbow many evenings by his worktable at home. He would have on an eyeglass that was like a monocle, but more than a monocle, it was a magnifying glass I like a miniature telescope. He had it on as he worked over a watch. He used a liEuid to clean the watches, which I learned years later I because I never forgot the smell of it I was carbon tetrachloride. You could pour it over watch parts to clean them and it would disappear. It would evaporate immediately and leave no residue. I can remember the smell of it to this day. I remember his hands and I remember watching 1 him with that glass in his eye. So I can prove from my own life that children can remember things from their third year. My father, Robert Isaac Farrand, the second son, wanted to study wanted to attend Syracuse University%s School of Business, but couldn%t because of the Depression. $: Did he, was he able to do anything about the clubbed feet or not- FARRA DC My grandfather was gifted mechanically and, working with a doctor, crafted a device that helped straighten my father%s ankles so that his legs and feet grew almost normally. A baby%s bones are plastic, much more than we think. Simply by main might the doctor and my grandfather took that little boy%s ankles and gently but firmly straightened and secured them in a clamp of sorts. I have a younger brother who also was born with club feet. The same situation. Working with a doctor, my father did for my brother what his father had once done for him. That%s what I can tell you about my father, a man I greatly admire. He married a feisty little Irish Catholic girl and they had siA children. He was Euiet and calm and patient4 she wasn%t. So, it was a noisy relationship over the years. $: (ell, what did your father do- FARRA DC When he got out of high school he went to work at a local gravel plant in northern New York because the economy was flat. Unemployment was sky high. I mean sky high. What was itH I guess it reached a peak of around twenty,three or twenty,four percent during the 5reat Depression4 but you know that number would be a disaster for any of us today. EAcept that in countries I have served in unemployment has been a lot higher than that sometimes. In any case, my father worked in the gravel pit and then the war hit. He went to work for a little while in his father%s a gun and watch shop in this little town down the road apiece from Watertown. Then the war hit. By then my father had three children and, because of his feet, couldn%t march. He was declared 1F by the local draft board, so he was not drafted into the armed forces. Instead, he went to Buffalo, ew York, in the same state, and went to work for the Curtis Wright Corporation which produced war planes. For eAample, Curtis Wright produced the P,10, also known as the 2itty Hawk and the Flying Tiger, and a transport plane. My father soon became an FeApediter,G that is, after working for a little bit on the line somebody must have realized that he could get along with others interpersonally. So, they sent him out as an eApediter because manufacturers of aircraft in those years would have ailerons produced here and wheels produced there. In Curtis Wright%s case they all had to come together in Buffalo. In those days Buffalo had major aircraft factories for Douglas, Bell Helicopter, and Curtis Wright , those three at least. We lived in Buffalo, New York, during the war on ration cards. When WWII was over my maternal grandfather, Joseph William Cain 7known to all as FJ.W.G8, invited my father, another son,in,law, and my grandfather%s son 7both my . uncles8 to come back to Adams, New York, which is fourteen miles south of Watertown, to join the family business. As a family partnership, that worked for a short while. $: (hat sort of business were they in- FARRA DC My maternal grandfather was Irish,American , maybe second generation. In any case, he and my grandmother moved into this little town of Adams, estimated population 1,.00, in the last decade of the nineteenth century, somewhere in the 1890s. In those days, Adams was the commercial hub of a farming community. My grandfather opened a grocery store that served the farm families , selling food and sundry items. The store survived the 5reat Depression in reasonably good shape because thatDs what happens when you sell things people cannot live without. Of course, not everyone could pay their bills, so my grandfather accepted goods in kind 7sacks of potatoes, a side of beef, etc.8, but he survived and that was the important thing. After the war, he decided he to branch out from groceries into appliances, small household appliances as well as water heaters and milk coolers.