The Foreign Service Journal, May 2011

M A Y 2 0 1 1 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 69 A F S A N E W S O nMay 6, the name of Eugene Sul- livan will be added to the AFSA Memorial Plaques in a ceremony at the State Department. Although he died in 1972 at the young age of 47, he had already lived a richer life than most men twice his age. He had beenmarried for 26 years to Hope Corkin Sullivan, and had fathered eight children. He was fluent in no fewer than 13 languages, some of them considered the most diffi- cult in the world. Before joining the Foreign Service in 1957, he served in the U.S. Navy, earned a degree in chemical engineering while working at the Naval Department as a Chinese translator, and worked as a lin- guist for the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency. Sullivan was an FSO with the USAID mission in Ethiopia at the time of his death from a particularly virulent strain of malaria: blackwater fever. Sullivan had previously served in Seoul, Taipei, Manila and Bangkok. Al- though he was fluent in two Chinese di- alects —Mandarin and Foochow— he was never assigned to China. Says his daughter Maureen Romagnoli, “I think if I could have granted him just two wishes, the first would have been that he could have lived long enough to travel to China. It was a dream of his that he never fulfilled.” The second wish for her Massachu- setts-born father? “To see his beloved Red Sox win the World Series. He was often discovered sitting at 2 a.m. on the edge of some bathtub in Taipei or Manila, straining to hear the games live over transoceanic radio static.” A scholar, officer and father, he loved reading bedtime stories to his children. “I remember listening at the doorway as he read stories to my younger brothers,” his daughter recalls, “and he did all the voices and accents to make the books come to life.” She also remembers her father’s great sense of humor and dry wit. “You didn’t want to play Scrabble against him, be- cause he could pull the most obscure words out of the air. And he could not only spell them, but recite multiple defi- nitions.” His family discovered after his death that he had been anonymously funding an orphanage in Ethiopia. A desire to help the poor and underprivileged is part of the legacy that Eugene Sullivan has left his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. His daughter adds that she has a third wish for her father, “as everyone knows you always get three. I wish he could have lived long enough to know his grandchildren. He would have been very proud.” The discussion was moderated by Amb. Donnelly, former assistant U.S. trade representative for Europe and the Middle East, and a former ambassador to Sri Lanka and Maldives. Amb. Don- nelly has worked for both the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. A Period of Great Change The discussion opened with reminis- cences of periods of great change in our foreign economic policy, including the fallout from the “Nixon Shock” in 1971, when the U.S. ended its participation in the gold standard, and the impact of in- ternationalizing the Foreign Practices Act, in whichAmb. Larson was involved. But of more immediate concern to both the audience and panelists was President Barack Obama’s recent focus on inter- national trade and export, and how globalization has changed the approach to economic diplomacy. On the difference between economic diplomacy and commercial diplomacy, the consensus was that the two are now more intertwined than ever. “We used to say, ‘When it’s handled by the State Department, it’s economic,’”joked Ford, “and when it’s handled by FCS, it’s com- mercial.’” But he conceded that com- mercial diplomacy plays a “crucial role” in economic diplomacy, pointing to Northern Ireland as an example of the commerce-and-trade angle used as a diplomatic negotiating strategy. Ford added that both State andCom- merce need to constantly coordinate their respective roles. “The private-sec- tor relationships that Commerce has forged are invaluable to economic diplo- macy,” he pointed out. National Export Initiative A large part of the afternoon pro- gram focused on the National Export Initiative, described in an executive order the White House issued in 2010. Said Ford,“This is the first time I recall a pres- Eugene Sullivan An Extraordinary Officer Whose Legacy Lives On BY FRANCESCA KELLY Eugene Sullivan in a pedicab on the streets of Taipei, 1959. HOPE CORKIN SULLIVAN Globe • Continued from page 65 Continued on page 71