THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2026 101 Lucien did not get his house back from the Romanian government until a few years after we had completed our Bucharest tour. Once he did, he hoped to sell it to the U.S. embassy, which, for a number of financial and other understandable reasons, declined to purchase it. Another buyer quickly snapped the house up. It saddens me that the lovely home where my family spent four happy years and where our distinguished U.S. Foreign Service predecessors, many of whom later became ambassadors, had lived no longer has any connection with the U.S. embassy or the Horowitz family. But I will never forget Lucien’s kindness and generosity toward us. n When we came to the second-floor corner bedroom that our son, Jonathan, an eighth grader at the American School of Bucharest, occupied and where he was busily doing his homework, Lucien became visibly emotional for the first time, saying that the room had been his. He politely lamented the presence of the wall-to-wall carpet, explaining that it obscured the beautiful parquet floor underneath. He added that he had been present when the workmen had fitted the final piece of wood into the elaborately patterned floor. Then, turning to Jonathan, he reached into his pocket, removed his wallet, and took out an old Romanian 500 lei JONATHAN RICKERT The former DCM residence in Bucharest as it looked following its sale by the previous owner, Lucien Horowitz. His former bedroom, the one occupied by the author’s son, Jonathan, in the early 1990s, is on the second floor and included the last two windows at the far right. banknote that he said he had been carrying with him ever since the day he had fled from Romania. In a show of the spontaneous generosity that is among Romanians’ most endearing qualities, he handed the banknote to Jonathan. Our son has treasured that gift ever since and always has displayed it prominently in a two-sided glass frame wherever he has lived.
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