The Foreign Service Journal, October 2008

52 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 8 t 6:30 on a cold midwinter day, it’s dark when I roust myself out of bed. By 7:45, I’ve showered, shaved, had breakfast, donned suit and tie, packed my briefcase, kissed Julie goodbye, and begun my 40-minute drive to the capital. A Foreign Service member getting ready to commute to the State Department? No, a freshman member of New Hampshire’s House of Representatives going to work in Concord. A stint as a politician had never been a part of my imag- inings about life after the Foreign Service — and certainly not beginning at age 77! Since coming to New Hampshire from Sudan in 1995, when I retired from the Foreign Service, and returning in 1999 after serving as chargé d’af- faires in Monrovia for about a year, I’ve maintained a focus on Sudan. I wrote a book about it; traveled to Khartoum and Nairobi in 1997 with another former American ambassador, the late Bill Kontos, to see if we could develop some ideas for ending Sudan’s civil war. I also worked as a consultant for a Sudanese charitable organization, chaired an international commission in relation to the peace agreement that ended the civil war in 2005, and went to Juba in 2007 in connection with the commission’s work. State issues lay largely outside my range of interests. I said as much in the early fall of 2007 when, to my surprise, Democratic Party officials asked me to run for a vacant seat in the New Hampshire House of Representatives. “You’ve got the wrong guy,” I replied. “There are others in Brent- wood [my town] who know a lot more about New Hamp- shire than I do.” And I gave them a couple of names. But after some friends urged me to run, I capitulated. On the Campaign Trail A day later, I had a call from Jim Webber, elected to fill a vacant House seat in nearby Seabrook several months earli- er. I readily accepted his offer to give me some pointers, and we met at a nearby coffee shop. A few minutes into our con- versation, I asked him to be my campaign manager, and he accepted. A man at a nearby table, Ed Cunningham, came over, plunked down a $20 contribution, and offered to knock on doors for me (which he did, several hundred times). The campaign was off and running! F ROM K HARTOUM TO C ONCORD A STINT AS A POLITICIAN WAS NEVER PART OF MY VISION FOR LIFE AFTER THE F OREIGN S ERVICE — AND CERTAINLY NOT BEGINNING AT AGE 77. A B Y D ON P ETTERSON Don Petterson, a Foreign Service officer from 1960 to 1995, was ambassador to Somalia, Tanzania and Sudan, among 10 overseas postings, and also served as a deputy assistant sec- retary of State. He is the author of Inside Sudan: Political Islam, Conflict and Catastrophe (Westview Press, 1999) and Revolution in Zanzibar: A Cold War Tale (Westview, 2002). In 2005 he chaired the Abyei Boundaries Commission. He was elected to New Hampshire’s House of Representatives in 2007.