The Foreign Service Journal, November 2008

Stratmon, director of the Ameri- can Cultural Center located within that building, had been at a meet- ing at the embassy. Return- ing to the cultural center, he nego- tiated entry with the al-Fatah leader and searched the building for American personnel, exiting in time to escape the bombing. This incident is just one of many episodes in David Stratmon’s journey from the poverty of a remote corner of North Carolina to a long and successful diplomatic career, building an international family along the way. It is a remarkable and thought-provoking story. After a two-year assignment with the U.S. Public Health Service in Liberia, Dr. Stratmon joined the For- eign Service in 1956, accepting an offer from the U.S. Information Agency that allowed him to be in the Gold Coast, as Ghana was then known, when independence from Great Britain was celebrated in 1957. His assign- ments included Ghana, Lebanon, Morocco, Chad, Congo, Jordan, France, Tunisia and Washington, D.C. He retired in 1975. Arias, Cabalettas, and Foreign Affairs: A Public Diplomat’s Quasi-Musical Memoir Hans N. Tuch, New Academia/ Vellum Books, 2008, $22.00, paperback, 225 pages. A lifelong lover of opera and classical music, Hans N. “Tom” Tuch served for 35 years in the Foreign Service, retiring in 1985 as a career minister. This unusual memoir recalls his devoted engagement with music, especially opera, in the context of that career. Tuch’s love of opera began in 1938 in Berlin, where he witnessed Herbert von Karajan’s first appearance as conductor at the Berlin Staatsoper. In 1950s Europe, he enjoyed performances by eminent conductors such as Furtwangler, Walter, Bohm, Szell and Barbirolli, as well as outstanding vocal artists like Schwarzkopf, Callas, Flagstadt, Ferrier, Seefried and Fischer-Dieskau. He escorted the Boston Symphony on its 1952 European trip, and the New York Philharmonic in 1959 and the New York City Ballet N O V E M B E R 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 31