The Foreign Service Journal, September 2004

exceptional leader and example for the Service. Although I had often heard about Amb. Horan from many of my col- leagues, I had not met him until he inquired whether Embassy Conakry would have any objections to a for- mer ambassador coming to post with his Foreign Service spouse. I was surprised and touched that he would make the effort to ensure that the embassy was comfortable with his presence in Conakry. This kind of concern for others, however, was typical of Hume Horan. Amb. Horan will long be remem- bered as among the best of our Foreign Service ambassadors. Vicki Huddleston Ambassador Bamako K ITING IN K HARTOUM I worked at USAID in Khartoum when Hume first came to Sudan as the U.S. ambassador in the early 1980s. One of his initial experiences was accompanying an embassy-orga- nized outing to fly kites at a small hill south of the capital. We were all having a great time enjoying the wind and flying our kites from this “bump” in the dreary landscape when suddenly we were all arrested. It seems we were inadvertently adja- cent to a military camp. (I doubt we would have been spotted except that one of the group went to answer the call of nature on the “other side” of the hill.) We were all carted off to the base and placed in a large cell that must have been part of the base prison. Hume kept his cool! He did not announce to our captors that he was the U.S. ambassador; instead, he calmed everyone and just listened to what the Sudanese were saying about us. Being fluent in Arabic and surmising what the Sudanese planned to do worked to all our advantage and we were released, minus our kites, and allowed to return to Khartoum. I wonder if Hume ever put on his resumé that he once spent time in a jail cell in Sudan? Gary E. Leinen Interim CTO USAID/Sudan Field Office Nairobi A P HENOMENAL M IND It’s hard to be concise about an individual as multifaceted as Hume Horan, especially after knowing him 31 years, but I’ll do my best. Serving with Hume was like being in a nonstop graduate seminar. The intellectual stimulation was never-ending. His ability to see con- nections in facts and events that ordinary mortals would never notice was phenomenal. His linguistic abil- ities were equaled by few. His abili- ty to coin the apt phrase, dipping into his internalized version of Bartlett’s Quotations , enriched by a multilingual Roget’s Thesaurus , never flagged. I have seen him launch instantly into energetic and entertaining conversation in French, Arabic or Spanish, either at recep- tions or on receiving visitors in the office, peppering his talk with proverbs and quotations to the amazement and amusement of his interlocutors. Added to this, he read German newspapers for pleasure when he could get them. I first worked for Hume as pol- mil officer in Jeddah in the early 1970s, when he was DCM. The fact that he filled that position for five years, serving three ambassadors, testifies to how greatly his knowl- edge and his language ability were valued by the chiefs of mission he served. Many years later he asked me to be his DCM in Abidjan. I jumped at the chance, despite my thought that sending two Arabists to a West African post was a misdirection of State Department resources. But before I knew it, Hume was meet- ing with the imams and religious leaders of Cote d’Ivoire’s Muslim community, amazing them with his knowledge of Arabic (sometimes exceeding their own), the Quran, and Arabic history and literature. His understanding of the impor- tance of Islam in that country, I dare say, has not been equaled since in our Service. Unfailingly optimistic, always polite, considerate and gracious to his staff, Hume Horan showed that one can rise to the peak of our Service with none of the aggressive, combat- ive career instincts we sometimes see in those who rise to the top. Profound knowledge, insatiable curiosity, an incredible reading speed (combined with an equally rapid if undecipher- able handwriting), and unending courtesy were the keys to his success. The Foreign Service will have few like him. Charles O. Cecil Ambassador, retired Alexandria, Va. P ROBLEM S OLVED I was USAID mission director in Cameroon during Amb. Horan’s assignment there. While I certainly share the professional respect and personal affection sure to be expressed by others, I would like to comment on a little-known event that reflects his sensitivity and kind- ness. As it happened, the American presence in Cameroon had an unusu- ally large number of Jewish members during the early 1980s. Several were devout and wished to organize ser- vices for the benefit of the local Jewish community. In the course of one of my regular meetings with Amb. Horan, I mentioned that there was no Torah in all of Yaoundé, and wondered aloud how we might be 70 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 4