The Foreign Service Journal, November 2018

68 NOVEMBER 2018 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL her best, so it was in the department’s interest to better support family members. From the moment the doors opened at FLO, the phone started to ring. Soon a “FLOmentality” began to develop inside the office, which I described as: the will to safeguard and improve the quality of Foreign Service life; a desire to provide people with individualized support; the patience, tenacity and courage to advocate for change; and a sense of active injustice in the face of situations, policies or regulations that seemed unfair. To explain how FLO was different, I often commented that FLO is “in” the bureaucracy but not “of” it. We accepted our position inside the system, but we were determined to treat people who sought assistance as individuals, not just as one more case. Most of the specialized functions associated with FLO today existed at the beginning, albeit in embryonic form. (Two excep- tions are comparatively recent problems arising from service at unaccompanied posts, where family members are limited or not authorized, and the complexities of establishing a worldwide digital presence.) Before FLO was two years old, the late Ben Read, then under secretary for management, wrote to me: “The Liaison Office has now become such an accepted part of our overall operations … that it is hard to realize that you have been operating less than two years.” The director and I dealt with questions about education for children and employment for spouses. We negotiated our first bilateral employment agreement, with Canada. In accordance with the AAFSW Forum Report, we established pilot FLOs over- seas—now known as Community Liaison Offices—and I drafted the first “CLO Guidelines,” suggesting what they might do and what information they should have available for their respec- tive communities. When we dealt with the department’s first big evacuation (some 400 evacuees from Islamabad in 1979), we worked to define the department’s and FLO’s respective roles in such events. Providing support and information for divorced spouses was a sensitive and difficult undertaking from the beginning. The number of divorces was both surprising and distressing, as was the bad behavior of some employees who withheld information and assistance from the spouses whom they were divorcing. I inadvertently became FLO’s first divorce counselor as I began to assemble sources of support for divorcing women who contacted me. At the request of our deputy chief of mission in Moscow, I wrote a rudimentary guide on dealing with divorce at post. Sub- poenaed to testify in an alimony hearing as an “expert witness,” I provided information on the role of a traditional Foreign Service wife overseas at that time, and what she was prohibited from doing. The information I provided led the judge to determine that alimony should not be reduced because the wife had in effect “earned” the alimony during some 20 years of supporting her husband overseas. We also worked with U.S. immigration officials on behalf of foreign-born spouses. We produced a number of widely used documents, includ- ing the “FLO Update,” which later became the “FLO Focus”; and we helped create the “Washington Assignment Notebook.” To respond to a rapidly increasing number of inquiries, we expanded the FLO staff, adding an employment counselor at the end of 1978. At the beginning of 1979, I wrote a proposal to add an education counselor. We added other positions, as well—someone to administer the CLO program and someone to provide assistance in times of emergency, such as evacuation. The CLOs overseas also set precedents. In 1981, while serv- ing as the CLO at Embassy Bonn, I travelled to Moscow, Sofia, Warsaw, Bern and Brussels to brief people about the new office. It was the first time a Department of State employee had travelled to multiple posts to discuss such “family friendly” issues. At the outset, some post officials were not enthusiastic. In 1982, again as the Bonn CLO, I cooperated with the FLO director to organize the very first CLO regional conference, bringing together representa- tives from our embassies in Belgrade, Budapest, Moscow, Sofia and Warsaw—Iron Curtain CLOs who regularly worked under great pressure at their respective posts and who wanted to talk together about their special concerns. In 1994, as the Brussels CLO, I received the Department of State Superior Honor Award from the Bureau of European Affairs. Until then, most Superior Honor Awards had been awarded to FSOs—never to a CLO. FLO Now FLO could easily have failed, but in 1978 that thought never occurred to me. I was so convinced of the necessity and util- ity of FLO that, as the saying goes, “Failure was not an option.” Personally, I have found it enormously satisfying to see FLO grow and rise to the occasion whenever new demands are made of its highly dedicated staff. Each generation has redefined and built on the work of earlier colleagues, sharing a commitment to safe- guard and improve the well-being of our Foreign Service com- munity. While taking pride in the past, FLO also faces new and continuing challenges, such as the need to facilitate employment for spouses and to provide support for families of employees who are sent to unaccompanied posts. Frommodest beginnings, FLO has become a full-fledged State Department institution, recognized by many other U.S. govern- ment agencies for the crucial support it provides to our Foreign