The Foreign Service Journal, December 2020

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | DECEMBER 2020 25 EARLY DAYS AND JOINING THE FOREIGN SERVICE FSJ: Tell us a little bit about your childhood. Where did you grow up? EJP: I was born in 1928 in Sterlington, Louisiana. My mother attended a college where she met my father, who was studying to become a minister. They got married without the consent of my grandparents; shortly thereafter, I was born. They divorced, and my mother took me back to her parents’ 360-acre farm in a town called Haynesville, in northern Louisiana, where she had grown up with nine siblings. All the siblings would eventu- ally leave the farm except for my Aunt Savannah, who helped raise me. When my mother and I lived on the farm, she met her second husband, Mr. Grant, at Pleasant Grove Church where he was leading a church group (he was a traveling minister). My mother began to see him against the advice of my grand- parents, who didn’t trust traveling ministers. During one of his visits to the farm, he asked my mother to marry him, and when they left for Pine Bluff, Arkansas, she told my grandmother that she would eventually send for me. I continued to live with my grandparents and my Aunt Savannah; this arrangement seemed the most natural thing in the world. I called my grandmother Mama—she brought me up with love and strict discipline. I moved to Pine Bluff when I was 14 to live with my mother and Mr. Grant; and we later moved to Portland, Oregon, where I graduated from Jefferson High School in 1947. I was accepted to go to Lewis and Clark College, but at the last minute, without telling my mother, I decided to enlist in the Army. FSJ: When and how did you decide you wanted to be a dip- lomat? EJP: When I left the Army in 1950 and became a civilian working for the military, I met American diplomats whose work intrigued me, and decided that I wanted to do the same thing. I realized that I had to get a college degree, and with the guidance and gentle push from a mentor, I moved back to the United States in 1953 and enrolled at Lewis and Clark College; as it was, the pull of overseas living overcame my desire to get a degree at that time. One of my classmates who had just delisted from the Marine Corps told me that his experience had made him a better person. I decided that the Marines was going to be my next adventure; it was one of the best decisions I made. FSJ: You served in both the Army and the Marine Corps overseas. How didmilitary service help prepare you for the Foreign Service? EJP: When I joined the Army, I trained in Fort Knox, Ken- tucky, for 10 weeks before being sent overseas to Korea and then Japan. In Japan, I was assigned to the Army’s central person- nel department in the 212th Military Police Company, where I learned about administration and the concept of personnel management. Later, the Marine Corps helped me learn self- discipline and focused my attention on the things that one needed to succeed. I enrolled in a self-study correspondence programat the University of Maryland to get a university degree. Mymilitary experience also exposedme to other countries and cultures, an opportunity I would not have had if I stayed in Oregon. FSJ: Is it correct that you met your late wife, Lucy Ching-mei Liu, in Taiwan, and that both your daughters were born while you were serving in Asia with the U.S. military? EJP: Yes, I met my wife, Lucy, in Taiwan. She was from a beautiful city called Miaoli. I was working as a personnel officer for the military exchange service in Taipei and she was one of the clerks in the same office. It took me a year to gain enough courage to ask her out for dinner. I took her to the Grand Hotel, owned by Madam Chiang Kai-shek, for our first date. When I first asked Lucy to marry me, she said no because her father would never agree. The Perkins family in 1983 at Katherine’s graduation from the Emma Willard School in Troy, New York. From left: Perkins, Sarah, Katherine and Mrs. Perkins.