Library of Congress Interview with William C. Harrop The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project AMBASSADOR WILLIAM C. HARROP Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: August 24, 1993 Copyright 1998 ADST Q: Today is August 24, 1993. This is an interview with William C. Harrop on behalf of the Association for Diplomatic Studies. I am Charles Stuart Kennedy. To begin with, could I get a little bit about when and where were you born and a bit about your family and your education? HARROP: Surely. I was born in Baltimore [MD] on February 19, 1929. My father was a doctor, specializing mostly in research on the faculty of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He moved to E. R. Squibb & Sons in New Brunswick, NJ, when I was 10 years old. I went to Harvard and received an A.B. Q: What field was that in? HARROP: In English literature. Subsequently, after a stint in the Marine Corps during the Korean War, I used the GI Bill to spend a year in graduate work in journalism at the University of Missouri in Columbia, MO. Just as I was completing that — in fact I was within a very short time of obtaining a master's degree in journalism — I was offered an appointment in the Foreign Service and accepted it. I was one of a considerable group of people who were delayed in entering the Foreign Service for a couple of years by Senator Interview with William C. Harrop http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib000482 Library of Congress Joseph McCarthy. This was the group who came in around 1954. We had been held up for two years when McCarthy cut off the funding to hire new Foreign Service Officers. Q: What attracted you toward the Foreign Service? HARROP: You know, that's an interesting question, because I wasn't sure of what I wanted to do. I think that there is a common tendency to have a mix of interest in journalism and diplomacy. This was true in my case. When I left college — I graduated from Harvard in 1950 — the father of a young woman whom I knew was the editor of the “Saturday Evening Post.” He had worked on newspapers all over the country and gave me letters of introduction to about a dozen editors of newspapers in New England: the “Providence Journal,” the “Boston Globe,” the “Hartford Courant,” the “Greenfield Times,” Springfield newspapers, the “New York Times.” I traveled around, interviewing these people, looking for a job on the editorial side, with no luck at all. It was a very bad time to be looking for work on a newspaper. As I was making those visits, I stopped off at Deerfield Academy, in Deerfield, MA, where I had gone to school. Frank Boydon, the great old headmaster who was there at the time, persuaded me, since I was not doing well finding a job in journalism, to come there and teach for a time. So I spent about five months teaching there before going into the Marines. When I left the Marines, the idea of journalism still attracted me, and I went to the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri. While there, I read a book or two about the Foreign Service. I was impressed by repeated stories about how difficult the Foreign Service exam was. I had a kind of, “Oh, yeah?” response to that. When I got out of the service in 1952, I took a “cram” course at George Washington University for 10 or 11 weeks during the summer and then took and passed the Foreign Service exam. Q: This was the three and a half day exam? Interview with William C. Harrop http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib000482 Library of Congress HARROP: Yes, three and a half days. Then the die was cast, without any particular planning or any particular preparation. I had taken no economics courses in college, and economics is extremely important in the Foreign Service. In fact, I didn't take much political science — mostly English literature. In that sense I entered the Foreign Service almost by chance and had a fascinating, 39-year career. Q: Well, you came into the Foreign Service in 1954, just when the McCarthy period was coming to an end. A new trickle of people came into the Foreign Service. Did you have regular classes or how did it work? HARROP: It was interesting. The Department cleverly used a contrivance to bring in a new group of officers. A really fine group of officers came in with me. The Refugee Relief Act was passed in 1953, sponsored by Congressman Emmanuel Celler, then the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. The ostensible purpose of the legislation was to provide visas for people uprooted from their homes during World War II. The actual purpose was to provide a great many immigrant visa numbers for what was called Fourth Category or Fourth Priority applicants. This would mean, essentially, brothers, sisters, and parents of existing American citizens or permanent resident immigrants. The Department used the money that was appropriated to implement this bill, which was of interest to a lot of congressmen, because of their own constituents' interests, to employ a group of perhaps 40 new FSO's [Foreign Service Officers] who had been waiting on the register since no money had been appropriated for their appointment. Some of these [newly-employed officers] went to Spain, some to Greece, and Eastern Europe, and the majority of them to Italy. The two posts [in Italy] receiving most of these officers were Naples and Palermo. For instance, in Palermo I was with Samuel Gammon, H. Freeman Matthews, and a number of other people who went on to have distinguished careers in the Foreign Service. Nicholas Veliotes and Samuel Lewis were assigned to Naples. We all knew one another at that time and have been good friends ever since. Interview with William C. Harrop http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib000482 Library of Congress Q: Then there was very little training? HARROP: We did not attend the standard A-100 Course [at the Foreign Service Institute]. There was no orientation course for this whole group. Accepting the appointment was a difficult decision for me. I had heard nothing from the Department for months, and was suddenly told over the phone that if I would appear within nine days in Washington I would receive an appointment and would go to Palermo. I was within about two weeks of examinations in graduate school [at the University of Missouri]. I decided to do it. My wife and I were expecting a baby at the time. We packed up and flew back to the East Coast. I left my wife with her parents in the Finger Lakes area of New York and went down to Washington. The baby was born, by good luck, the day before I was to leave for Italy. I spent a matter of hours in Washington, checking in, and left for Palermo. Q: Just as an historical note, the first, organized class [at the FSI] in the post-McCarthy period was in July, 1955, I think. That was class A-1, or whatever. I was in it, and that's why I know. Before that you were sent out as sort of infantry replacements. HARROP: We really were sent out without any briefing or preparation at all and had to make our way overseas. And making our way wasn't easy because the Consulate General in Palermo in 1953 was a post which normally would have had about 12 people, which seems large. Then, with the Refugee Relief Act, it just exploded to almost 100. There were 75 or 80 people assigned, including about eight or nine vice consuls. I remember that Samuel Gammon's in-laws, whose [family] name was Renwick, and my in-laws, whose name was Delavan, happened to take the same boat to visit us in Palermo. One couple said to the other, “Where are you going?” The others said, “Well, we're going to visit our son-in-law who's the American Vice Consul in Palermo.” The first pair took great umbrage at that, replying, “No, our son-in-law is the American Vice-Consul in Palermo.” So there was a large group of us, issuing visas almost entirely to mothers, sisters, and parents of American citizens or holders of green cards [permanent residents of the U. S.]. Interview with William C. Harrop http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib000482 Library of Congress Q: What was the situation in Palermo, as you observed the scene at that time? HARROP: It was just after the era of Salvatore Giuliano. Giuliano was the great, supposedly “Robin Hood” outlaw who came from a nearby town named Partinico. He became a living legend after WWII, idolized and feared. Sicily was a very poor island, indeed, at that time — it still is relatively poor, although “relative” is an important word. One thing I recall is that on visiting the marketplace a few days after arriving we experienced “culture shock.” When we saw great chunks of meat hanging in the open air and covered by flies. Interestingly enough, in later years, when we went to truly under-developed areas of Africa, we never again experienced such a sense of culture shock. We'd been through that in Southern Italy in the 1950s. Sicily is a beautiful island. The wonderful Greek ruins are really some of the finest in the world. I think that it was a blessing to this very compatible group of young Foreign Service Officers, all coming in together, all with young children.