John C. Bersia
Although a book’s preface is typically written by its author, I welcome the opportunity to describe how this particular work came into being, having attentively observed its development. For more than a decade, I listened to comments made by those in Harriet Elam-Thomas’s circle—from her husband, Wilfred J. Thomas, and longtime friends in the Washington DC, Maryland, and Virginia area to newer friends, colleagues, and students in Central Florida—as to why she should write a book. For much of that time, she reacted with disbelief, followed by a question: What might she have to say that would differ from the many memoirs written by diplomatic colleagues with similar or even greater accomplishments? The answer, as readers will shortly realize, plays out beautifully in the following pages.
One of the first to encourage Ambassador Elam-Thomas was Olive Kelsey, a colleague and friend she met in Paris a half century ago. Another was Milton Coleman, who took the time to send her a lengthy email message a decade back outlining the impact such a book could have on young people of any hue contemplating a career in international affairs. Closer to home, her husband regularly urged her to share the challenges and successes in her career to demonstrate to young men and women that they, too, could reach the highest ranks of the diplomatic service. Orlando-based friends such as Beverly Marshall-Luney and Dan Haggerty later joined the chorus. I quietly applauded their enthusiasm, for I knew they were right.
Then students in Ambassador Elam-Thomas’s honors diplomacy course at the University of Central Florida (UCF) added their voices, encouraging her to preserve some of the many stories she related in class to illustrate effective ways of building lasting relationships across cultures. Why not chronicle her journey from Simmons College, with a degree in international business, to work as a secretary in the U.S. embassy in Paris, her time in President Richard Nixon’s White House, her first State Department posting in Dakar as an assistant cultural affairs officer, and eventually her return to Dakar twenty-eight years later as the U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Senegal?
She learned French as a teenager, Greek at the age of forty-two, and—inspired by witnessing a speech by South Africa’s former president, Nelson Mandela—Turkish at forty-seven. Those linguistic talents served her well, for she spent seventeen years of her career dealing with Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus. There was much more to come. Never in her wildest dreams did she think she would later serve as counselor of the U.S. Information Agency, the organization’s senior-most career officer, for the two years prior to its integration into the Department of State. Nor did she imagine she would find herself on a stage with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Assistant Secretary Evelyn Lieberman on October 1, 1999, as they presided over the ceremony during which she handed the “keys of USIA” to Secretary Albright. That event took place two days before she married Wilfred. The Washington Post reported, “Harriet Elam will have a busy weekend.” Busy it was and truly life changing, as well.
This book is designed primarily to inform readers about Ambassador Elam-Thomas’s forty-two-year career in the Foreign Service as an honest and authentic representative of the United States. The memoir also covers the dozen years that followed, first as a diplomat in residence (an opportunity I was proud to initiate through UCF’s partnership with the Department of State), then as a professor-advisor and director of the Diplomacy Program at UCF. There she navigated the delicate balance of teaching the practical aspects of diplomacy while respecting the importance of history and theory.
In addition, this book serves to remind those who have only documentaries and Hollywood versions of diplomatic life that it is not all cocktail parties and receptions. Diplomacy is a profession filled with trials as well as triumphs. Those trials have increased exponentially with accelerated globalization and all it entails.
In closing, I invite readers to follow the journey of Harriet Elam-Thomas, “the little Elam girl from Roxbury,” who went on not only to shoulder some of the world’s heftier problems but also to ensure—through her students and others who draw inspiration from her memoir—that new shepherds of honesty and authenticity will trace her international footsteps for generations to come.