The Foreign Service Journal, March 2015

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MARCH 2015 45 Luzzato Coen, was the descendant of a promi- nent Jewish-Italian family based in Trieste. Fiorello was named for his maternal grand- mother, Fiorina Luzzato Coen. The LaGuardias immigrated to the United States in 1880. Five years later, Achille enlisted in the U.S. Army as a band conductor, serving in the Dakota Territory; Watertown, New York; and at two frontier forts in Arizona. In 1898, at the beginning of the Spanish-American War, he was transferred to Tampa, Florida, where he became seriously ill and was discharged from the Army. He then took his family back to Trieste, where he managed a hotel before dying in 1904. At loose ends in Trieste, the 18-year-old Fiorello did not want to work in his father’s hotel. An acquaintance of his father, Raymond Willey, who was the U.S. consular agent in Fiume, told him about a clerical opening at the U.S. consulate general in Budapest and gave him a recommendation. Fiorello trav- elled there for an interview and was hired. The job did not pay much, but it afforded young Fiorello a modicum of freedom, and was an interesting learning experience. The Chester Connection Frank Dyer Chester, the consul (later consul general) there, was an honor graduate of Har- vard University (Class of 1891), an Arabist and classical scholar. But he may have owed his appointment to being a member of a distinguished Boston Brahmin family that socialized with the powerful Senator Henry Cabot Lodge (R-Mass.). Even so, Ches- ter was a thoroughly competent diplomat. Most of his reporting covered commercial matters, trade opportunities and public health issues, but included the occasional political item. The younger Fiorello must have impressed Chester, since he referred to him in reports as his “amanuensis,” a word whose meaning the young clerk had to look up in a dictionary. Since the office had no typewriters, it was Fiorello’s task to interpret and draft his boss’s notes for reports. His work also included collecting and organizing statistics, accepting applications for visas and for U.S. passports, keeping track of consular fees and rendering assistance to Americans passing through Budapest. The most high-profile visitors he met were dancers Isadora Duncan and Loie Fuller, both famous across Europe. Chester, who was a bachelor, warned Fiorello about the peril of personal involvement with glamorous women and the potential of blackmail, but the impetuous young man was not deterred. Once he took a blonde beauty against whom Chester had specifically warned him to the theater. Chester, who was attending the same performance, saw LaGuardia and fired him on the spot. However, the order was soon rescinded through the good offices of Vice Consul Louis Gerster. Chester advised Fiorello that one way he could render himself useful in the Foreign Service, despite his lack of proper academic credentials, was to learn languages. He even sent him to Croatia for four months to learn Croatian. By the time he returned to the United States in late 1906, LaGuardia spoke fluent Yiddish and Italian, and had also learned German, French, Croatian and Hungarian. This linguistic ability allowed Library of Congress/Bain Collection Fiorello LaGuardia, shown here in his office on Ellis Island. He worked there from 1907 to 1910, following his Foreign Service career, as a language interpreter for Italian, German, Yiddish and Croatian immigrants.