Library of Congress Interview with Margaret D. Tutwiler The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project MARGARET D. TUTWILER Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: May 4, 1999 Copyright 2001 ADST Q: This is tape 1, side 1 of an interview with Margaret D. Tutwiler. This is being done on behalf of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training and I am Charles Stuart Kennedy. To begin with could you tell me when, where you were born and something about your family. TUTWILER: I was born in Birmingham, Alabama on December 28, 1950. My parents are from two of the oldest families in Alabama. My mother's family, a gentleman named Henry DeBardeleben... Q: What does that mean? TUTWILER: I just looked it up recently on the Internet and there are DeBardelebens back in Germany until 1159. I don't know what it means. This gentleman designed the first coke furnaces and did work in the mineral area of Alabama. He is very famous in our state. My father's family, the Tutwilers, were also involved in minerals and real estate. One of the early Tutwilers helped bring in the first railroad to the state of Alabama. His best friend's name was a Mr. Temple, last name, and there have been four generations of Temple Tutwilers. A woman in our family in the 1800s, Julia Tutwiler, was the first female admitted to the University of Alabama, wrote the Alabama state song and was very much Interview with Margaret D. Tutwiler http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001199 Library of Congress into education. She got women separated from men in prison. There is a Tutwiler prison for women in Alabama. The largest dorm on the University of Alabama campus is named in her honor. So, both families within the confines of the state of Alabama have been good citizens and have been successful and contributed to our state. Q: And, also I assume these were examples that you grew up withaving them trotted out before you from time to time? TUTWILER: I was aware of them. I am very proud of my heritage on both sides. I was raised knowing that I was blessed in many respects and with a real deep sense of duty, paying something back, and love of country. My father jumped on D-Day in World War II. He was in the 82ndAirborne. He was shot but did not take his cyanide pill but crawled into a fox hole and took pictures of the invasion while he lay on the beach. We went back as a family 22 years later. What I saw on that beach was just a beach. But, I knew standing there with my father he was seeing something quite different. In fact, on the day of his jump, his buddies took him into some farmhouse where he passed out unconscious. We drove around but couldn't find the farm house. My father died in 1982. I actually flew back onto those beaches with President Ronald Reagan for the anniversary celebration. That was pretty unbelievable, to imagine that number one, my father survived the beach and the invasion and number two, that I, his daughter, was flying back there in a helicopter with Ronald Reagan, the President of the United States. It was really quite overpowering. Q: What was your father doing when he wasn't involved in World WaII? TUTWILER: He was an investment banker for our family. He did a lot of civic things in our city. He went to an office but didn't work in a corporation or other business. After the war, his brother who had been fighting in the Pacific was killed in a small plane crash coming home from the war, and his father had recently died and my father had gone to the University of Virginia and he never went back. He managed all of our family financial affairs. Interview with Margaret D. Tutwiler http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001199 Library of Congress Q: How about your mother? What was her background? TUTWILER: My mother was a housewife and she used to say that her greatest accomplishment was to raise three good citizens, which I believe she did. She was a wife and a mother. She was patriotic and civic minded but basically she spent her time on her family. Q: Where did you go to school? TUTWILER: I actually went to a private school in Birmingham, Alabama that my mother had gone to. It had one teacher in one room and went from first through fourth grades. My best friend and I were the entire fourth grade. Q: Was this where first grade was in row one and second grade in rotwo, etc.? TUTWILER: Yes. Q: I went to one of those, too, run by a couple of ladies. TUTWILER: It's true. Miss May Ward was the teacher. Then I went to a private girls school in Birmingham that at the time was named Brook Hill, today it is coed and has merged with a private boys school and is called the Altamont School. My mother had gone there also. I was there from fifth grade through twelfth. Q: While you were at Brookhill what were your interests? TUTWILER: History, government. It used to be known with all of my friends that I really would not talk on the phone at night when the evening news was on. I was never really interested in local politics or news, but really interested in national and international news. I just have a natural interest in it. Q: How about reading? What sort of reading were you doing? Interview with Margaret D. Tutwiler http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001199 Library of Congress TUTWILER: Whatever was mandatory. There was one book that spurred even to this day one of my hobbies, the Romanovs, and the book was Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert Massey. I was fortunate enough to have lunch with Mr. Massey in the early 1990s. Because when we were in Ekaterinburg on a trip with Secretary Baker, Secretary Baker knew of my interest for 20 something years in the Romanov family and the Secretary had a private dinner that night with the Governor of Ekaterinburg. The next day I went to the morgue and went into the room with Secretary Baker and saw all the bones of the Tsar, his wife and children. It was unbelievable, an incredible and fascinating experience. Q: He also wrote a very good book called Dreadnought which is history of British naval expanse. TUTWILER: Massey? Yes, fascinating. Q: An excellent author. Sometimes I have a feeling that when you go to a place like Birmingham you feel like you are falling off the edge of the world as far as newspapers go and all that. Were the Birmingham newspapers covering national and international news? TUTWILER: I don't remember. I remember watching the evening national news, Huntley Brinkley. I am a more visual and verbal person. If someone gives me a huge dissertation to read, I will not retain it as well. I retain better visually and verbally. I read the newspaper and the national magazines. I was always interested in what was going on, but at the same time I had a very normal childhood. I had a boyfriend and friends, cared about clothes, a normal teenager. I don't want to give the impression that I was a studyholic or bookworm. I wasn't. Q: I have found, particularly with the men I interview, on asking what was their great interest in high school, it was not particularly political science or something, but usually girls and sports. Was the segregation/desegregation crisis a subject of conversation? Interview with Margaret D. Tutwiler http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001199 Library of Congress TUTWILER: I only remember one time. Martin Luther King was either being arrested or was coming back to Birmingham, I don't remember the specifics. Our family owns property downtown in Birmingham and my father came home and told us that he along with some other property owners downtown were very fearful that the situation would explode into a lot of violence. They had signed some type of paper that said if one brick is thrown they were not going to tolerate it. Whatever needs to be done in the city will be done to prevent violence. He cared deeply about the city, especially the core downtown area. He believed that a city is only as vibrant as its downtown area and if you scare off the merchants, bankers, lawyers, the city is just going to die. He spent a lot of time working on making sure that people stayed downtown and didn't flee to the suburbs with their businesses. He spent a lot of volunteer time on those types of things. I never saw any violence. I don't remember any violence. I don'remember any unpleasantness. That is the only thing I remember. Q: When you graduated in 1969, were you pointing towards anything iparticular? TUTWILER: I was focused on getting into college. I was never a student but am fairly competitive. No matter how many times my father grounded me for bringing home Cs and Ds, it didn't work. I was very stubborn. However, in the tenth grade I figured out I didn't want to be left behind and had to get serious so I could get into college. From that time forward I was either on the A honor roll or B honor roll through my senior year.