The Foreign Service Journal, May 2016

38 may 2016 | the foreign Service journal responded primarily to house fires and provided families with their first assistance in the form of housing and money for cloth- ing. Our first national disaster response was Hurricane Katrina. We served two three-week tours in Mississippi, where we had some of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of our lives. We were hooked. We are both in Red Cross leadership posi- tions now and have responded to many national disasters. I am on the Virginia state leadership team and have responsibility for Red Cross government liaisons statewide. Breda also volunteers at the local American Cancer Society thrift shop, and I do a fundraising golf tournament for the Red Cross each year. We are both involved in other activities such as golf, gardening, jewelry making, motorcycling, singing in a barbershop chorus; but it is the Red Cross that gives us a sense of accomplishment and purpose. I feel like I’m having a second career that is as satisfying as my time in the Foreign Service. Earl D. Mannoia was a management officer from 1975 to 2000. He served in Islamabad, Amman, Düsseldorf, Djibouti, Vienna, Washing- ton, D.C., Bern and Bonn. In retirement, he has done While Actually Employed and contract stints in Belgrade, Hamilton, Dublin, Frank- furt, Peshawar, Cairo, Dubai, Dushanbe and Washington, D.C. FromConsular Officer to Immigration Attorney By Russ Wi nge I welcome the opportunity to share my story of life after the Foreign Service. I chose the consular cone and during my career concentrated on learning as much as I could about immi- gration law because I believed it offered a skill set that would be most easily marketable upon retirement. While assigned to Vancouver, I had personal contact with many immigration attorneys. When word got out that I would soon retire, I received several offers to work at law firms as a legal assistant. I realized I knew as much or more about immigration law as most attorneys. I then began considering law school. First I needed to know if I could get into one, so I took the law school admissions test (LSAT) and applied to three law schools in the Northwest. To my surprise, all three welcomed me! After some in-depth planning with my wife, Aileen, we decided to go for it, and I retired. At my retirement luncheon in Vancouver, a young vice consul asked me if I thought I might be a bit old to be going to law school. I told him, perhaps, but I would give it a shot, practice law for a while, and if I didn’t like it, I might try medicine! I matriculated at Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon. While I studied, Aileen worked for the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Portland. She had taken all the cor- respondence courses offered by State and by INS, and she was a most welcome employee. After I graduated, I set up a law practice and Aileen came to work with me. Her work at INS made my future presence there as an attorney presenting cases much smoother. Furthermore, her in-depth knowledge of INS and State Depart- ment requirements and procedures was instru- mental in guiding clients through the process. My law practice was very successful. I man- aged to earn far more than I could have earned Russ Winge at his graduation, Senior Citizen Class of ’88, from Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon. COURTESYOFRUSSWINGE