The Foreign Service Journal, September 2011

S E P T E M B E R 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 63 Nathaniel Davis , 86, a retired FSO and former ambassador, died on May 16 in Claremont, Calif., where he was professor emeritus of political sci- ence at Harvey Mudd College. Mr. Davis was born in Cambridge, Mass., on April 12, 1925. His father, Harvey Nathaniel Davis, taught at Harvard University and his mother, Alice Rohde Davis, was a research medical doctor. In 1928, the family moved to the campus of Stevens Insti- tute of Technology, in Hoboken, N.J., where Harvey Davis was president. Nathaniel Davis attended the Stevens Hoboken Academy and graduated from Philips Exeter Academy in 1942. He then attended Brown Univer- sity, where he served in the U.S. Navy Reserve. He received his degree and commission as an ensign in the U.S. Navy in September 1944, but was a member of the Class of 1946. He was on active duty on the USS Lake Cham- plain until 1946, after which he earned a master’s degree and, ultimately, a Ph.D. in 1960 from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts Univer- sity. Mr. Davis began his Foreign Service career in 1947 with an assignment in Prague, where he witnessed the com- munist takeover less than a year later. Subsequent postings took him to Flo- rence, Rome andMoscow before he re- turned toWashington, D.C., to work on the Soviet desk in the StateDepartment in 1956. That same year he married Elizabeth Kirkbridge Creese. His next posting was Caracas. From there he returned toWashington, D.C., for an assignment at the Peace Corps, where he was special assistant to the di- rector, R. Sargent Shriver, and later deputy director for program develop- ment and operations. Mr. Davis was named U.S. envoy to Bulgaria in 1965, after which he served on the staff of the National Security Council in the White House, where he was responsible for Soviet and East Eu- ropean matters as well as the United Nations. In 1968, he went to Guatemala as ambassador, and in 1971 to Chile. Mr. Davis was ambassador in Santiago dur- ing the presidency of Salvador Allende through the coup that deposed him, and would later write a history of that period called The Last Two Years of I N M E M O R Y