Library of Congress Interview with Ambassador Peter S. Bridges The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project AMBASSADOR PETER S. BRIDGES Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: October 24, 2003 Copyright 2004 ADST Q: Today is the 24th of October, 2003. This is an interview with Peter S. Bridges. What does the 'S' stand for? BRIDGES: Scott. Q: Scott: S-C-O-T-T. BRIDGES: Right. Q: This is being done on behalf of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training and I'm Charles Stuart Kennedy. Let's start at the beginning. When and where were you born? BRIDGES: I was born in New Orleans in June 1932, and that for two particular reasons: one was that my mother was a New Orleanian; secondly, at the time I was born my father was in Georgetown, in what was then British Guyana. I mention this because his profession had a lot to do, I think, with my going into the Foreign Service. He was a businessman who spent almost all of his professional life working for Libby, McNeill & Libby, the food canning firm, and for the first twenty years he was in their export department. He had wanted to be an international businessman ever since he shipped out Interview with Ambassador Peter S. Bridges http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001327 Library of Congress to sea on a tramp steamer after he finished high school in Norfolk. I myself had always, from the time I was a boy, wanted to do something in foreign affairs; I had assumed, when I was a boy, that I would follow him into Libby's. One Saturday morning, when I was about 10 years old, he said, “Oh, no, you can't do that.” I said, “Why not?” and he said, “We have an anti-nepotism rule. We don't hire children.” I was dismayed, and I think at that point decided that if I couldn't join Libby's, I wouldn't go into business. I'd do something else. But it took me a while to figure out what. Q: Okay. Well, let's talk first about the Bridges family. Where did they come from, and what's the background on the Bridges? BRIDGES: The Bridges family is from Gloucester County in Tidewater Virginia, and they were farmers there for a very long time. My oldest traceable ancestor there is a man named Simon Stubblefield who got a land grant in Gloucester in 1688. The Bridges must have come from England; I don't know when they came, but my ancestor Robinson Bridges was farming in Gloucester in 1782. The Bridges were farmers, prosperous I think but not rich. My grandfather had a farm and a country store, and was the local postmaster. He also had 12 children, my father being the youngest, and with all that family the post office was called Bridges. So my father was actually born in Bridges, Virginia, which no longer exists as a post office but is still seen as a locality on some maps. My mother, as I said, came from New Orleans, and she had met my father when he was working out of New Orleans for Libby's, into Latin America. They were married in New Orleans, and he was then transferred to company headquarters in Chicago. So I grew up in Chicago. Q: Did your father go to college, or did he go right into- BRIDGES: He went to the University of Virginia for one year, he and his next oldest brother. I believe their tuition was paid by their oldest brother. After they had been at Charlottesville for a year the oldest brother got married, and my uncle Hughes and my father Charles Bridges decided they couldn't ask their brother to pay their tuition while Interview with Ambassador Peter S. Bridges http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001327 Library of Congress he was also supporting a new wife. So they went rambling out to the Midwest, where they thought of going to college. They finally enrolled in the University of Chicago but, according to my father's story, they never quite got to class because there was a class of girls learning archery on the Midway, and they would stop to watch the girls shooting bows and arrows and never got to class. Eventually they decided they had to do something else. They saw an ad in the paper for a marvelous institution that would give you a college education in one year for $100. So they enrolled in that, with pretty much the last of their money, but very soon discovered that this was not the institution that they needed, and so decided to get their money back and go home to Norfolk. Question was, who was going to approach the head of the school. They drew straws. My father lost and went to the director with a sob story that their mother was dying in Virginia and they needed their money back so they could go home and bury their mother before they could, of course, resume their studies in Chicago. My father said that he was so convincing that he got the money back, and that this made him decide to become a salesman. So he became a salesman. Q: How did he get involved at Libby's? BRIDGES: Well, again, he had shipped out to sea for a year and he wanted to do something in foreign business. He got a job at Libby's, but on the domestic side, in the sales department and pushed and pushed, and after what I think was three or four years he got into the export department and worked in that department for, oh, the next 20 years. Q: Was this mainly in the South American circuit? BRIDGES: Yes. He worked out of New Orleans into the Caribbean and Latin America from 1927 - I still have his old passports - until after he was married in 1931. I was born in '32 at which point he transferred to Chicago, still in the export department but not working all the time into the Caribbean and South America. Q: What was your mother's maiden name? Interview with Ambassador Peter S. Bridges http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001327 Library of Congress BRIDGES: Her maiden name was Devlin. She was the granddaughter of a man who was one of four brothers who left County Donegal in Ireland before the famine to emigrate to America. The oldest of the brothers, Daniel Devlin, settled in Louisville, where he opened, finally, a jeans factory. He had been a merchant tailor when he came from Ireland. He had a very successful business life and eventually ended up in New York City. His youngest brother, my great-grandfather William Devlin, went south down the Mississippi. He was the only one of the four to really go down the river, but one of my great-uncles told me once that apparently his eldest brother Daniel - the most successful one - had for a time been a clerk on a Mississippi river steamboat, and told his youngest brother William, “You ought to go south, it's a big rich country down there.” So my great-grandfather ended up on the Atchafalaya river in Louisiana and married there. His first wife died without having any children and then, at the age of 56, he married Mary Roussel, the 22 year old daughter of his neighbor, and they had six children, the oldest of whom was my grandfather. Q: And what type of business did your great-grandfather own? BRIDGES: Before the Civil War my great-grandfather was a merchant in Paterson, Louisiana. I have seen his account books which are in the Historic New Orleans Collection. For a time he also worked with his two oldest brothers, who owned Devlin & Company, a clothing manufacturer in New York City. My great-grandparents moved to New Orleans after my grandfather was born, and he had a real estate development company there. They had quite a lot of money, the last of which seems to have leaked out in the Great Depression. Q: And your grandfather did what? BRIDGES: My grandfather, Daniel Joseph Devlin, studied at Georgetown University, and then went back to New Orleans and went to Tulane Law School. Then he decided to get married, in 1905. He realized that a struggling lawyer probably wouldn't be able to support his family, so he sold appliances for a while, and eventually after several years Interview with Ambassador Peter S. Bridges http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001327 Library of Congress began managing a paint manufacturing company in New Orleans; he did that until he was probably 78 years old. He managed it, but he didn't own it. Q: Where did your mother go to school? BRIDGES: My mother graduated from Newcomb College, the women's college of Tulane University. Q: Was she set for a career or was this more of a tradition at the time? BRIDGES: She really had no money; my grandfather had struggled to put all his four children through Tulane. There were two boys and two girls; the younger daughter was my mother. Her older sister, Angela, became a teacher. My mother had studied art in college and got a job with the New Orleans Times Picayune doing artistic work for the newspaper. But she was fired early in the Depression, I think she must have been pleased when my father came along and married her. They had a very happy marriage, but I think it may have come at a good time for her.