The Foreign Service Journal, September 2004

able to get one. He immediately offered to write to a colleague in Israel about the problem. Within a few weeks, courtesy of Embassy Tel Aviv, a Torah arrived in Cameroon. Apparently made for traveling, it was about one-quarter the size and weight of a normal vol- ume, but complete in every way. Services could be held with a proper Torah! Ronald D. Levin FSO, retired Longboat Key, Fla. A S OURCE OF I NSIGHTS Hume Horan was the most intriguing member of the 20th class of the Senior Seminar, 1978- 79. Of obvious brilliance, he was always a source of wonderful insights, and he was capable of rolling off long, vivid monologues, as if they had been written in advance. One I will always remem- ber occurred at a dinner party fol- lowing the collapse of the Iraqi army, which brought an end to the first Persian Gulf War. We asked Hume, whose son was a tank com- mander in the Mother of All Battles, to tell us what the Middle East would be like as the scope of the defeat became known. I can- not quote his words verbatim, but without missing a beat he held us all rapt as he painted an unforget- tably vivid description of young men walking through dusty, unpaved streets under gray skies, kicking stones in sullen anger, curs- ing the day they were born, feeling the defeat as if it were their own, and looking forward to a future without hope. Every observation, in retrospect, was on the mark. Hume was an uncommonly seri- ous and reflective man who also had a well-developed appreciation for the absurd. In a bureaucracy in which that was not always a wel- come attribute, he won the respect, affection and admiration of his col- leagues. Stan Zuckerman FSO, retired Mclean, Va. R EPAYING A D EBT OF G RATITUDE Hume Horan’s distinguished and varied career attests to his extraordi- nary dedication and commitment to the Foreign Service. Indeed, his pro- found understanding of the Arabic language and Muslim world is leg- endary. Less well known are his service as president of AFSA from 1991-92 and as ambassador to Cote d’Ivoire from 1992-95 — the two assign- ments where our paths crossed. As AFSA president he recruited me to be a candidate on his slate. And on the eve of his assignment to Abidjan in 1992, we met over dinner to dis- cuss the country where I had served some 34 years earlier. In a June 1992 letter, Hume asked the fundamental question that arises often in a career: “Why does one join [the Foreign Service] … or better put, why does one stay?” He answered his own question as follows: “An important part of that answer is the company and friendship of other Foreign Service people. It is they that make up the community we live in — that ‘global village’ we inhabited before Marshall McLuhan devised the term ... All that is good about our experience was there ... the discussion of exciting events and interesting peo- ple (past and present).” He conclud- ed: “We are thankfully in your debt.” It’s particularly appropriate that we now record our deep debt of gratitude to Hume Horan for the selfless dedication of his prodigious talents to the service of the country — and the world. Donald R. Norland Ambassador, retired Washington, D.C. S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 4 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 71