Library of Congress Interview with Hume Horan TO MY CHILDREN The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project AMBASSADOR HUME HORAN Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial Interview date: November 3, 2000 Copyright 2001 ADST Q: Today is the third of November, 2000. This is an interview with Ambassador Hume A. Horan. This is being done on behalf of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, and I am Charles Stuart Kennedy. Hume and I are old friends. Hume, let's start at the beginning. Can you tell me when and where you were born and then we'll talk about your parents and your family and we will move on? HORAN: Fine, thank you, Stu. I was born - I first saw the light of day - here in Washington, DC, at the Columbia Hospital for Women, on August 13, 1934. The day corresponded with the birthday of my favorite uncle, Larry Hume. Q: In the year of the dog by the way. HORAN: Yes, I am a dog. That is, by the Korean Zodiac. Q: I'm a dragon; my wife is a dog. According to all the Chinesrestaurant things dragons and dogs should never marry. Interview with Hume Horan http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib000530 Library of Congress HORAN: My wife, Lori Shoemaker, is a tiger, a Horangi. A Korean friend said to me, “Ah, yes! Tigers and dogs get along quite well. It is a happy correspondence.” Q: Well, anyway, let's talk about your parents, I mean about youfamily and all that. HORAN: My mother was the daughter of an old Washington family, very conservative sort of in a Thomas Mann sense. She was a rebel, a rather dramatic, unconventional flapper. Q: What was her family name? HORAN: Margaret Robinson Hume. Her mother was Sally Cox, who married Charley Hume. Mother's grandfather was a Cox, who owned an estate in Washington named “Tunlaw.” The name survives in the Glover Park street, which it so happens, is just two blocks from our house at Huidekoper Place. An earlier ancestor, Colonel John Cox, had been Mayor of Georgetown. Around the turn of the century, Coxes and Humes were numerous in Washington. Many repose in Georgetown's Oak Hill Cemetery. Mother, however, was of a different mold. She traveled to Paris as a young woman and from what family gossip has it, had herself a wild, wonderful time. On returning to Washington, she quite shocked her family and friends by eloping in 1923 with a Persian diplomat, a young Third Secretary named Abdollah Entezam. You can imagine how such a marriage was received by the close-knit, southern society of Washington, DC! As one newspaper said, “The groom is a young man of great charm but with an olive complexion.” My wonderful grandmother, however, was and always remained very attached to Daddy. Daddy's next assignment was to Tehran. He and Mother sailed from the U.S. to Marseilles, went by train across Europe to the Caspian, then took a ferry to Iran. Mother spent the next three years in Tehran. She loved the family, and was loved, in turn, by them. She learned Persian, was adventurous, independent, and traveled everywhere in Tehran via little horse-drawn “droshkies.” She completely eschewed the American club - partly because her husband was not allowed to enter. After Tehran, my parents had a number of Interview with Hume Horan http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib000530 Library of Congress foreign postings, including Prague, Warsaw, and finally Bern. It was from Bern that Mother returned to the U.S. in 1939 with me and my sister. Soon after her return to the U.S. she and my father were divorced. One often hears about the tribulations of western women who marry Muslims, and in particular what these women sometimes endure at the hands of family and mothers-in-law. Mother's case was altogether different. In later years, when I visited the family in Tehran, they were full of affectionate generosity and remembrances of Mother, and criticized my father for having let his marriage fail. Q: Did she come back to have you? The Persian hospitals weren't thgreatest. HORAN: Yes. Life was extraordinary for a young American woman in Tehran in the 1920s. Mother told me how while traveling from Babolsar on the Caspian to Tehran, we spent the night in a caravanserai. For days thereafter she worked to remove the fleas and lice from my hair! But back to my birth: my sister, Leyla, was born in Paris. It was a difficult birth, so when I got to be born, Mother decided to come back to Washington to have me with better medical care. Q: What was, where did your father's family fit into the Persiasociety at that time? HORAN: His was a family of some prominence under the Kajar dynasty. His father, Entezam Saltaneh, had been governor of Tehran. In time, Daddy became Foreign Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, then head of the National Iranian Oil Company. His brother, Nasrollah Entezam, was ambassador to Washington and Paris, and President of the U.N. General Assembly back in the 1950s. Nasrollah died in a military hospital/ prison after Khomeini took power in 1979. When the Shah fell, Nasrollah was overseas. Friends warned him not to go back, but he said,”I have nothing to hide.” My father, however, was never bothered at all by the Khomeini regime. No scandal or impropriety was ever attached to his name (or to Nasrollah's either for that matter). Helpful to my father were his close ties to the Sufi movement, plus a reputation for total honesty and often embarrassing frankness. While serving in Bern, I was told, my father had been Interview with Hume Horan http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib000530 Library of Congress something of a guardian for the young Crown Prince, who was a student at Le Rosey. In later years, this relationship let my father speak more bluntly to the Shah than other members of the court would. One evening, the Shah held an imperial soiree. The Shah wore his super-dress uniform - something like a marquee at a Las Vegas casino. He noticed my father was wearing a plain, dark business suit. The Shah asked,”Entezam! Where are your orders and decorations?” My father relied: “Your Majesty, I am too old for those sort of things.” As the monarchy was toppling, the Shah asked Daddy to serve as Prime Minister (a sort of relief pitcher, in a losing game, in the bottom of the 9th). He refused and retired to private life. When he died, Sir Dennis Wright, who had been British ambassador to Tehran, wrote a touching obituary in the Times. He stressed that Abdollah Entezam was known as a man of extraordinary independence and total honesty, throughout his life. I visited my father in Tehran after his retirement. His apartment was very modest: living room, dining room, kitchen, and a single bedroom. He'd been given a beautiful rug on retirement from the National Iranian Oil Company; he gave the rug to my sister. To me he said “I have got everything in the world I need here. I live on my pension.” When I think of the people of stature that I have met over the years in the Middle East, there have not been many who died as poor as he. Q: Your mother and father divorced in 1939. So you would have been five years old. Were there any sort of memories of Persia or Switzerland or anything? HORAN: Vague memories of Switzerland. None of Persia. My sister remembers Persia much better. The divorce sort of flowed over my head without a ripple. First there was Daddy and later there was Pops, another brilliant, affectionate, wonderful person. Q: By the time you were five were you speaking Persian? HORAN: When we were in Tehran, I was very small. So only maybe a few baby words of Persian - I remember none. My earliest memories are of Europe, especially Bern. I learned some German when I was small. Interview with Hume Horan http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib000530 Library of Congress Q: Well, in 1939 what happened to you? HORAN: I guess the marriage was beginning to come apart. They were not a well- matched pair: Mother was social, outgoing, and tended to extravagance. Daddy could be very warm and funny, but basically was highly intellectual and simple in his lifestyle. About 1939, though: there was a story Mother used to tell that she'd urged my father to take us out of Europe. “This continent is going to blow to pieces.” He, the professional diplomat, said, “Oh, no, don't worry. The great powers will not allow it. The British will do this, and the French will do that, etc.” She decided anyway to take us home. We went down to Marseilles. We sailed on the “Exocorda.” I remember it from dockside as this titanic steel slab of a ship. How am I going to travel on that? We were the last boat out of the Straits of Gibraltar before war broke out. Food may even have run short on the last days of the crossing, because I remember eating a lot of broccoli and drinking a lot of tomato juice. The Exocorda was sunk during the war. Anyway, we were home in the States. Daddy was in Europe. In the course of time Mother met my stepfather, Harold Horan. She divorced my father, married Harold, who adopted me. Q: Well, what was his background? HORAN: His mother, Helen Horan, was originally Austrian; his father, John Horan, was Irish immigrant who joined the New York police force.