The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project RICHARD A. BUCKLEY Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: April 26, 2018 Copyright 2020 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Background Born in Little Falls, New York, August, 1934 BA in Business, Niagara University 1952–1957 Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC), Fort Sill 1956–1958 LLD, Loyola University New Orleans College of Law 1960–1965 Accountant for Pan-American Life Insurance—New Orleans, Louisiana 1960–1965 Fort Polk, Louisiana—First Lieutenant for National Guard reserve 1961–1962 Berlin Wall is built Washington, DC—Lawyer for the U.S. Department of Justice 1965–1966 New Orleans, Louisiana—Assistant Professor at Loyola University 1966–1967 Formulate a legal service program New Orleans, Louisiana—Director for legal service program 1968–1970 Segregation in Louisiana followed by lawsuits Ketchikan, Alaska—Director for Alaska Legal Services 1971 Discrimination in the Southern justice system Houston, Texas—Working on Supreme Court Johnson​ vs. Louisiana ​case 1971–1972 Washington, DC—Deputy Director of the legal services training program 1972–1976 Meets and forms relationship with Prudence Bushnell Dallas, Texas—Director for Dallas legal services 1978–1981 Marries Prudence Bushnell Spouse Prudence Bushnell enters the Foreign Service 1981 Dakar, Senegal—Trailing Spouse 1982–1984 1 Training Consultant to USAID Community Liaison Officer West Africa Invitational Softball Tournament (WAIST) Mumbai (Bombay), India—Management Consultant Training 1984–1986 Consular Assistant Principal of Bombay International School Arlington, Virginia—Training Consultant 1986–1989 Dakar, Senegal—Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) training sessions 1989–1992 Accounting for the embassy employees’ association American Indian presentations for International Schools Little Falls, New York—Researching the history of Little Falls 1993–1996 The Hague, Netherlands—20th Observation of the Rwanda Genocide 2014 Nairobi, Kenya—Trailing Spouse to Ambassador Bushnell 1996–1999 Facilitated Kenyan mission program plan Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Bombings in Oklahoma City and New York City Happy Valley Party Nairobi Bombings Ambassador Prudence Bushnell work after bombings Washington, DC—Foreign Service Institute, Spanish language training 1999 Frostman annual Republican get-together Guatemala City, Guatemala—Trailing Spouse to Ambassador Bushnell 1999–2002 Myers-Briggs Type Indicator trainings September 11, 2001 War on Iraq Washington, DC—Foreign Service Institute, Trailing Spouse 2002–2005 Spouse Ambassador Prudence Bushnell Retirement September 2005 Post-Trailing Spouse Career Sage Associates LLC 2005–2013 Published book A​ Unique Place, 2008 A Diverse People. The Social and Political History of Little Falls, New York President Obama’s Inauguration 2009 Trump’s election and Women’s March 2016 State Department’s History Advice for the Department of State 2 INTERVIEW th Q: Today is the 26​ ​ of April, 2018 with Richard A. Buckley. Being done on behalf of the Association for Diplomatic Studies; I’m Charles Stuart Kennedy. You go by Dick or Richard? BUCKLEY: Richard. Q: Richard, when and where were you born? BUCKLEY: I was born August the 16​th,​ 1934. Nearly nine months after the end of Prohibition. Q: Ah-hah; I was born in 1928. BUCKLEY: We’re both of the same generation called the silent generation. We’ve never elected any president. Q: Let’s start on your father’s side. What do you know about where the Buckley’s came from, and what your father was up to? Also, back farther, if you know. BUCKLEY: Both of my father’s parents came from Ireland. My grandfather probably in 1888 and my grandmother in the late 1892. My grandfather came from County Cork, and my grandmother from County Clare. I started genealogy search through Irish websites that will continue. Q: Your grandparents I assume met in the States? BUCKLEY: They met in Little Falls, New York, where I was born. Right in the geographic center of New York state. Q: Part of the Finger Lakes? BUCKLEY: No, it’s in the Mohawk Valley, which separates the Catskills from the Adirondacks. Q: You were born there? BUCKLEY: I was born in that little town; it was about 12,000 people then. Q: Go back to when you were a kid. What was your father doing? 3 BUCKLEY: Both my mother and father never got beyond eighth grade. Both of them, I learned (I’ve done a little bit of genealogy on them) worked in the tannery in the knitting mills, and my father was still working in a knitting mill (if he could) into 1934 when I was born. He subsequently became a driver for the city public works, after going through one of FDR’s (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) programs. Q: What sort of house or apartment did you have? BUCKLEY: Funny you should ask. I remember – I traced my birth certificate and subsequently, that we lived right next to the railroad tracks when I was born. I can’t remember my first year or two because there was a lot of noise from those trains. At that time, the New York Central Railroad had about 160 trains daily go through there; trains were the big thing in transportation as you know in the ‘20s and ‘30s. Q: Oh, yeah. You grew up in a working-class family. BUCKLEY: It was lower than that, it was if you could find the work. Q: Also, this is during the Depression. BUCKLEY: Right, I was born right in the middle – you were born before, but I was born right smack in the middle of the Depression. So, I had six years of the Depression before the war. Q: What do you recall? Obviously, you were very young, but how did the Depression hit your family? BUCKLEY: We didn’t get any poorer! I was fortunate to be born just about the time that the feds funded emergency nursery schools. They had the states designate what cities could obtain these nursery school funds, and fortunately our city was designated as one. We also got a cooperation high school and college, so they did have a program there. I went to nursery school for three years, from age two to five. It really helped. Q: Do you recall nursery school? BUCKLEY: Yes. Q: Want to talk about it, what you did, what it was like? BUCKLEY: My nursery school had very little learning like they have in pre-school now. It was mainly someone coming in to take care of the kids. But a lot of time outside because it was held at a school. The reason that emergency nursery school came in to effect (I read about it recently) was to employ the teachers, especially from rural areas or some in the local area, who were laid off because of the Depression. The school where the nursery school was held had closed because most of the kids on the other side were the newly arrived kids like the Italians and Slovenians and Slovaks. They had to work as 4 kids, 12 years old working in the knitting mills. So that space was allowed for the nursery school. I remember a couple of main things. Playing outdoors. Eating some food that I was not accustomed to, like canned carrots. And taking a nap on an army cot and an army blanket, scratchy. Day in and day out. Going outside, we spent half our time outside, weather permitting. Q: You’re right up in the snow-belt, aren’t you? BUCKLEY: We are. In fact, I think (I never checked this out), we had a little climate change for the worse. It was hard winters starting in mid-October to end of May when you’d get the last snow there. It was heavy. Q: Back at home, did you have brothers and sisters? BUCKLEY: Yes, I had three siblings when I was born. My oldest brother Joe was seven years older; my sister Betty was about five-and-a-half years older; my brother Donald was four years older. That’s why I always say, “Why did I come along when they already had three kids?” Here’s the Depression, and they barely have a job. I think they went out to celebrate the end of Prohibition, and forgot that they had their quota of children already. Q: What was family life like? BUCKLEY: It wasn’t like the movies and TV shows made in the ‘50s, families from Father Knows Best ​and all that. We hardly ever ate together because we had different activities going on. My parents got home late – it wasn’t nine to five in those days it was like a 10-hour shift. I always had to go someplace after nursery school, someone to care of me until they got home. It was tough. But I found it the only life there was. Q: If you’re a kid, this is what you do. What about, were there discussions about politics or anything like that? Or was there much of a dinner table? BUCKLEY: No. Discussion was mainly about sports. My father was a die-hard Democrat; Little Falls, our home town, is a Democratic outpost surrounded by Republican communities – the county’s basically Republican. Little Falls is a bellwether for New York politics; if it goes Democratic, you’re likely to see the New York State Governorship go Democratic. Q: Roosevelt was pretty much god in the … BUCKLEY: Roosevelt was – and Truman also, when he took over. Q: Were you much of a reader? BUCKLEY: Funny you mention that. I’m not at the point yet, but I’ll mention it, it was a turning point in my life. We had no books. Remember, my parents never got out of eighth 5 grade. The most they read were the newspapers and maybe a magazine, but no books that I recall in my home.