The Foreign Service Journal, February 2009

36 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 9 orma M. McCaig, creator of the phrase “global nomad” and founder of Global Nomads International, died on Nov. 10 at her home in Reston, Va., after four years with bone cancer. With her pass- ing, Foreign Service and military brats and all other Third Culture Kids “lost their mother.” As one young person said at her memorial service, “I know that I am a global nomad because Norma told me I am. She gave us a name and a place we can call home.” A regular lecturer at the Foreign Service Institute, the au- thor of the Journal ’s early articles on raising globally mobile children, and someone actively involved with the Foreign Service Youth Foundation, Ms. McCaig was a vibrant force in the diplomatic community. Yet as I sat at her memorial service on Nov. 16 at the Uni- tarian Universalist Church of Reston, with her art on display, listening to her friends and family talk about her personal life, her spiritual life, her artistic life and her professional life, I realized how little I knew about this diminutive redhead. Norma was always much more fascinated with everyone else’s story — and how to connect people by sharing their stories. A Pioneering Vision Norma M. McCaig was born on July 25, 1945, and moved to the Philippines at the age of 2 with her father, a pharma- ceutical executive (as she’d joke, “my daddy peddled drugs in Asia”), mother and brother. At the age of 13, the family moved to Sri Lanka. Norma attended boarding school at the Kodaikanal International School in India, and then finished high school back in the Philippines before returning to the U.S. Norma translated her childhood experiences into a life- time of promoting international understanding, with a pio- neering vision of a cross-cultural identity and organization. In 1984, she created the term global nomad, both because she did not want to be called a kid and because she wanted a more elegant, and expansive, designation for herself and oth- ers like her. This gift of creative terminology is just one of her many contributions to the field of international cultural intercourse, which include “cultural chameleon,” “passport culture” and other phrases now whizzing around on the World Wide Web. Along with sociologists Ruth Hill Useem, who coined the term “Third Culture Kids” in the 1960s, Dave Pollock and Ruth Van Reken, all authorities on growing up internationally, Norma McCaig was a pathbreaker, an energetic champion for the globally mobile community. She was the first to rec- ognize the importance of helping global nomads on “re-entry” into their home country, and envisioned a global nomad club at every college and university. She encouraged many uni- versities to recognize and allow students to designate them- selves as global nomads on their applications. This includes the children of Foreign Service personnel as well as those from military, missionary and business families. “Norma McCaig not only changed our world; she changed my life,” writes Van Reken, co-author with Dave Pollock of Third Culture Kids: The Experience of Growing Up Among Worlds. “I first met her in 1987, when she dared to cross sec- tor lines and attend a conference about missionary kids (in A PPRECIATION P ASSAGE OF A G LOBAL N OMAD N ORMA M. M C C AIG , 1945 – 2008 B Y M IKKELA T HOMPSON Mikkela Thompson, daughter of retired FSO Ward Thomp- son, is a global nomad, portrait painter and writer, and the former business manager at the Journal . N