The Foreign Service Journal, January 2006

38 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 6 nusual as it was, my 29-year passage from U.S. Foreign Service junior officer to Foreign Service National in Panama’s Foreign Ministry has been a fascinating journey, particularly after I had spent so many hours and years in country team meetings on the third floor of the U.S. embassy dis- cussing what the government of Panama was doing and how the U.S. should respond. When Secretary of State Henry Kissinger gave the oath of office to our large 119th Foreign Service class at the State Department, in the summer of 1975, I couldn’t have imagined that our careers would fly by so rapidly, or that I would eventually serve three tours of duty in the same country — much less retire there. “Three Musketeers” from that cohort —Vince Mayer, Chuck Keil and I — headed off to our first tour, where the U.S. was negotiating a new Panama Canal treaty. I remember as though yesterday arriving at Panama City’s Tocumen International Airport. Though it was just my first tour, I felt every inch the important diplomat, until the colleague who met me on the tarmac pointed to a man beside an Air Force aircraft who he identified as my first boss, the political section chief — I was a consular- coned rotational junior officer — struggling like a porter with the bag of a U.S. representative, a member of one of the many congressional delegations that visited Panama during the treaty negotiations. The chief U.S. negotiator, the venerable Ellsworth Bunker, seemed to us diplomatic grunts monarch-like, with limousines, helicopters and myriad beck-and-call assistants. So when I returned to D.C. two years later and took the shuttle bus from the State Department to the Foreign Service Institute, I was nonplused to see the elderly envoy tucked into a seat next to an entry-level lan- guage student — no fanfare at home, just another feder- al commuter, demonstrating the stark divide between official life and hierarchy overseas and the relative obscu- rity of a Washington assignment, even for the ambas- sadorial class. In August 1977, the U.S. and Panama signed a new Panama Canal treaty and, following a bitter struggle, the U.S. Senate ratified it by a single vote. Though naysayers declared Panamanians incapable of running the Canal properly, almost six years after its end-of-century turnover even U.S. officials acknowledge that the “eighth wonder of the world” operates better than ever and with fewer accidents. I was gratified to have played a small role in finally set- ting things right in America’s relationship with Panama, but after two years there I was ready to move on to F O C U S O N F S R E T I R E M E N T S ERVING IN P ANAMA O VER AND O VER A GAIN U A N FSO WHO SERVED THREE TIMES IN P ANAMA C ITY NOW LIVES THERE AND WORKS AS A F OREIGN S ERVICE N ATIONAL FOR THE P ANAMANIAN F OREIGN M INISTRY . B Y R OBERT R AYMER