The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2008

J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 8 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 13 n June 19, Ambassador Thomas David Boyatt received the American Foreign Service Association’s Award for Life- time Contributions to American Diplo- macy, in recognition of a distinguished 26-year Foreign Service career and a lifetime of public service. Past recipients of the award include U. Alexis Johnson, Frank Carlucci, George H.W. Bush, Lawrence Eagleburger, Cyrus Vance, David New- som, Lee Hamilton, Thomas Pickering, George Shultz, Richard Parker, Richard Lugar, Morton Abramowitz and Joan Clark. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on March 4, 1933, Thomas Boyatt received his B.A. from Princeton University in 1955, and an M.A. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University the following year. He then served in the U.S. Air Force from 1956 to 1959 before enter- ing the Foreign Service. Mr. Boyatt was posted first as vice consul in Antofagasta, Chile (1960-1962), then as assistant to the under secretary of the Treasury (1962-1964), economic officer in Luxem- bourg (1964-1966) and political counselor in Nicosia (1967- 1970). In 1970 he returned to Washington to be special assistant to the assistant secretary of State for the Near East. From 1971 to 1974, he was director of the Office of Cyprus Affairs. (During that period he also completed the State Department’s 1972-1973 Senior Seminar in Foreign Policy.) In 1975 Mr. Boyatt became minister-counselor in Santiago, his second assignment to Chile, spending three years there. He then served as ambassador to Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) from 1978 to 1980, and was ambassador to Colombia from 1980 to 1983. Amb. Boyatt was promoted to the personal rank of career minister before retiring from the Foreign Service in 1985. He was vice president of Sears World Trade, a partner in the IRC Group, and became president of U.S. Defense Systems in 1990. The State Department conferred a Meritorious Honor Award on Amb. Boyatt in 1969 for his heroism during the hijacking of a TWA plane on which he was a passenger. The following year, he received AFSA’s William R. Rivkin Award “for intellectual courage, creativity, disciplined dissent, and taking bureaucratic and physical risks for peace on Cyprus,” and would also earn AFSA’s Christian A. Herter Award for Constructive Dissent in 1975. In 1999 he was awarded the Foreign Service Cup for post-retirement contributions to the Service, and he received a lifetime achievement award from the American Foreign Service Association in 2001. Several foreign governments have also decorated him. A former trustee of Princeton University, Amb. Boyatt has been a member of the advisory boards of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton and the Patterson School at the University of Kentucky. In addition to serving as a director of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University, he has taught for many years at the Foreign Service Institute. Amb. Boyatt is the president and founder of the Foreign Affairs Council, an umbrella group composed of AFSA and 10 other organizations that support the Foreign Service. He is also active in the American Academy of Diplomacy, the A T IRELESS A DVOCATE FOR THE F OREIGN S ERVICE : T HOMAS D. B OYATT L AST MONTH AFSA RECOGNIZED THE RETIRED AMBASSADOR ’ S MANY CONTRIBUTIONS TO A MERICAN DIPLOMACY AND HIS LIFETIME OF PUBLIC SERVICE . O B Y S TEVEN A LAN H ONLEY