Library of Congress Interview with The Honorable John W. Limbert , 2011 The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project AMBASSADOR JOHN WILLIAM LIMBERT Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial Interview Date: May 30, 2006 Copyright 2011 ADST Q: John, to begin with, when and where were you born? LIMBERT: I'm a native Washingtonian. My family came to Washington from the Middle West during World War II. Q: When were you born? LIMBERT: 1943. Q: So you were born right in the heart of that one. Okay, let's just talk first on your father's side. What do you know about the Limberts, your father's family? Where did they come from? LIMBERT: Well, they, my father was second generation. His father and mother both emigrated from Eastern Europe, what might today be in Poland or Belarus, and they came during that large wave of migration, around 1900. Q: Were there any stories that you were hearing about where the family or the life they came out of, how they got out and all of that? Interview with The Honorable John W. Limbert , 2011 http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001714 Library of Congress LIMBERT: Not really. My impression was that it wasn't just him but his generation felt very American and were very proud of being American. What he heard from his family was so awful that there wasn't a lot of looking back. Q: Nostalgia was not the name of the game. LIMBERT: No. I do recall my grandmother, she was on my mother's side and they also, they were part of that same generation, my mother's father and mother were both immigrants from Eastern Europe and I do recall my grandmother, when I told her that I was going into the Foreign Service, her look of disbelief and her comment was, “And what's wrong with here?” Q: There's a lot of people who thought when you joined the Foreign Service, the Foreign Legion. LIMBERT: That's right. But the idea that anyone would want to leave, because the memories were in fact truly awful from that period and that was of course the period that drove millions of people not only to the United States but to Canada and to Argentina from appalling conditions in Eastern, Southern, and Central Europe. Q: Well what did your grandfather on your father's side, then on your mother's side, your grandparents, once they came here, what did they get involved in, working? LIMBERT: Some of them worked in factories. I recall my mother saying that her father worked in the Studebaker factory. He was a leather worker. I think they settled first in Connecticut and then moved to South Bend, Indiana, to work in the Studebaker plants. Other parts of the family I think had small businesses. I believe my father's family, settled in Cleveland. They had a small business. My mother's family settled in Indiana. Interview with The Honorable John W. Limbert , 2011 http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001714 Library of Congress Q: But in the time, your father was working, he was working, were you born in, well you were born in D.C. but where, where had your father and mother been located prior to coming LIMBERT: I believe they were living in Indiana. They were living in the Midwest. He was a Navy officer and was transferred to Washington, came here during the war, and they stayed. Q: How did he become a naval officer? LIMBERT: I don't know. It was wartime. Q: Had your mother and father gone to college or not? LIMBERT: He had gone to Ohio State. My mother went to the University of Illinois, which made for some very interesting times when Ohio State and Illinois played football. Q: It's interesting that, coming from the background that your parents did, that they both went to universities. LIMBERT: Well, I have the impression that within the family, the children both were interested and this was something that was possible. Again, these were state universities, so these things were possible to do. My mother recalls that her father always pushed her to get an education and even encouraged her to think about coming East for an education, which in those days would have been very unusual. But she said she went to a football weekend at Illinois, she saw Red Grange play and she said that's where she had to go. Q: Those were the great days of Midwest football. The Four Horsemen, I guess, at Notre Dame, Red Grange at Illinois. Did you grow up in D.C? LIMBERT: I grew up in D.C. As I said, after the war my parents stayed. My dad got out of the navy and took a job with the U.S. government and I grew up in and around D.C. We Interview with The Honorable John W. Limbert , 2011 http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001714 Library of Congress lived in various places. It was a very middle class kind of existence. D.C. was very quiet, very southern, very provincial in those days but my parents always said that compared to the Midwest it was still culturally very, very active. We lived in Fairlington for a while. At that time, in the late 40s and early fifties, it wasn't anything like today's Fairlington. It was pre-gentrification. It was where the Shirley Highway ended at Fairlington. I believe it's what's today King Street was the end of Shirley, or Seminary Road was the end of Shirley Highway. That was all there was. The schools, this would have been about 1949-1950, the schools in Virginia were so bad at the time that my parents paid tuition, this sounds very strange today but they paid tuition for me to get on the bus and go to elementary school in the District. Q: I know, this, I've talked to other people and the District schools used to be considered really top rate, much better. The Maryland schools weren't very good, either, at the time. I remember, I lived in Annapolis at one point and I went to private school because they had skipped something like the sixth grade in order to save money. The University of Maryland was not accredited. A pretty miserable picture. LIMBERT: It was. As I remember, in those days there was North Fairlington and South Fairlington, on both sides of the Shirley Highway and the school was located in South Fairlington. So we lived in North Fairlington. To get to the school these kids had to walk across Shirley Highway to get to school and when you got to the school it wasn't great. The school in the District I think was called H.D. Cooke, still exists, up on 16th Street, near what was then called the Meridian Hill Hotel, I took the bus there, a very good school. Q: Now the school at the time was segregated, wasn't it? LIMBERT: They were segregated until 1954. Desegregation would have been about 1954 so I would have been somewhere around sixth grade when the schools were desegregated. Actually what happened was they did build a new school out in Virginia, it was pretty good, so I think I went there for the second grade, then we moved to D.C. Interview with The Honorable John W. Limbert , 2011 http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001714 Library of Congress and I went to the schools there. What you sensed more than the schools was just the segregation of social life of Washington. Washington was a southern city. We had, in those days, as many middle class families did, we had an African-American maid. She would come in a couple days a week to help my mother and she was a big baseball fan. But what I didn't realize at the time — I was nine or ten years old and I didn't know much — she did not like the Washington Senators because the Washington Senators were a segregated team, had no African-American players. However, when the Cleveland Indians came to town and Larry Doby and Luke Easter but particularly Larry Doby, who was the Jackie Robinson for the American League, when he was going to play, she and I went to the ball games, she would take me to the ball games. And of course we would sit with her friends and I didn't understand why all these people were rooting for the visitors but they were and of course if Larry Doby hit a home run, that was even better. If Cleveland won, of course that was even better. I didn't understand it at the time but later on it became clear what was going on. Q: Tell me, about home life, have brothers, sisters? LIMBERT: I had two sisters, both older. Q: And was this a family that sat around the table at night and talked about things or did everybody do their own thing or what? LIMBERT: No, I think, again, what probably influenced my parents and then influenced us was what hit a lot, what influenced a lot of people of that generation was the Depression and World War II and Roosevelt. If there was any religion in our family and there wasn't much but if was there was it was that Roosevelt was nearest thing to God. Q: So, basically, you grew up in a Democratic family? LIMBERT: Very much so and if they agreed that Roosevelt was God, then they also agreed that Richard Nixon was the opposite.