The Foreign Service Journal, February 2010

46 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 1 0 T HREE D IFFERENT FS I NCARNATIONS I entered the Foreign Service in 1960, following graduation from Haverford College and mil- itary service. With that fall’s elec- tion, it became the Kennedy era, an exciting and hopefully reward- ing time to work overseas. So I was looking forward to an inter- esting, lifelong career. Just eight years later, however, I resigned from the Service fol- lowing tours in West Pakistan, Australia, Hindi-Urdu language training and a return to Pakistan. While I had my dream job as a South Asia political officer, I had be- come disillusioned by the direction of our foreign policy and the huge increase in the influence of the military and intelligence agencies vis-a-vis the State Department. Upon resignation, I went into secondary school edu- cation, working in private and public schools as a teacher and administrator. We aimed at the Baltimore area, and the Friends School of Baltimore offered me a position. It turned out the head of the upper school had been at my college a few years behind me. The network worked! Baltimore was a great city in which to re-enter the United States. Interesting politically, it had a dynamic mayor (later, governor) who oversaw an urban renais- sance — including the Inner Harbor project that trans- formed an industrial port area into an upscale hotel/ conference/tourist center. I taught urban geography, and used that project and the reopened blue line com- muter rail as part of the course. I also taught two sen- ior electives that I created, one of which relied heavily on my Foreign Service experience. The Orioles be- came my team, and I coached soccer, basketball and tennis. We had, by and large, missed the social and political turmoil of the Sixties, so returning in the summer of 1968 added to our own “culture shock.” We devoted ourselves to local matters: politics, historic preservation, feminism, zoning and land preservation, with little atten- tion to foreign policy issues. I earned a master’s at Johns Hopkins University and returned to choral singing. I re- sumed my cricket career, begun in college and contin- ued during overseas tours. In 1978 I joined a cricket tour of England and Wales, and later founded the Annapolis Cricket Club. It was a satisfying time of transition intellectually, as well as personally: Our third child became our first native-born one. But my wife and I were struck by the insularity of the American people: how little they knew about foreign issues, how sure they were that every- thing was better in the U.S. There was also a huge loss of status for me, personally, not to mention a 50-percent cut in salary. A teacher simply has little standing in America — “If you can’t do, then teach” was a prevalent catchphrase. In 1987, my wife joined me on a Baltimore Choral Arts tour of Spain, and we began to think of a return to the international world. By 1988, my wife decided to take the Foreign Service exam and passed both the writ- ten and oral portions; but validation of the test was held up by a court review to determine that the results were not tainted by sexism. What irony! While awaiting a resolution, she began a campaign for state office. When she got the call from State that she had been accepted, she held off on her decision until we went to visit our son, then in his junior year in Germany. Our first day on the ground, she made her decision to accept the offer, entering the Foreign Service in 1990. It was a great validation for her because her sex had prevented her from being an officer in the Sixties. And I enjoyed my second FS incarnation as a trailing spouse, in effect switching roles with Ann. After Ann’s retirement in 1997, she became a WAE consular officer, and I was brought back in to join her as the first tandemWAE couple. But this time we entered to do a job and travel — not to try to save the world. On my return to the Foreign Service, I was struck by the greater diversity in the ranks. But the resources of the State Department seemed more meager than in the late 1960s, and the influence of military and intelligence interests even greater. R. Allen Irvine Plainfield, Mass., and Baltimore, Md. F O C U S I have found my second career as a CEO in leading international nonprofits to be as fulfilling and rewarding as my 29 years as an American diplomat.