Our surprising turn of events was triggered by a phone call on April 11, 1997, Craig’s birthday, from the White House personnel office. We were sitting at the vineyard, enjoying the warm sun and a glass of wine as we discussed changes we wanted to make in the vineyard, when we heard the phone ring.
Kathryn’s assistant came outside. “The White House is on the phone,” she said.
Kathryn got on the phone.
“How are you doing?” asked Whitney Staley, an engaging 25-year-old woman Kathryn had met a few months earlier at the White House.
“Oh, it is the most gorgeous day here,” Kathryn replied. “It’s Craig’s birthday, it’s sunny, and we’re having a great time sitting outside.”
“Well, your day’s going to get better,” Whitney said. “Are you available to take a call in about four hours?”
Kathryn affirmed that yes, she would be available then.
“Good. Please be ready.”
We knew what the call had to be about. Some eight months earlier Kathryn had begun talking to people in Washington—especially our close friend, then–Senate leader Tom Daschle—about the possibility of being appointed to an ambassador position. She had lived overseas, spoke other languages, enjoyed foreign affairs, and we thought it would be an opportunity of a lifetime for our family as well as a chance to make a difference through public service.
An ambassadorship isn’t something you apply for. You seek out people who are involved in the administration and let them know that you would be interested. Then you try to push that effort along any way you can. That’s not easy since the selection process is so obscure. While many ambassadors have been active fundraisers or political donors, there are many more people who have given or raised a lot of money whose wishes to become ambassadors never materialize. In truth, it’s a very black box. Nobody knows exactly how each president selects ambassadors, but roughly about a third of the appointments for ambassadorships are non–State Department employees and the rest are promotions from within career diplomatic ranks.
Even though we figured that the White House wasn’t calling to turn Kathryn down, this phone call would be the moment of truth. We could think of nothing else in those next hours. Where would they offer? Kathryn had asked for Austria, but you never know.
The phone rang again about four hours later.
“Would you like to be ambassador to Austria?” Marsha Scott, assistant to the president, asked Kathryn.
“I would be deeply honored,” she replied.
Instructions followed—including the fact that Kathryn would not be allowed to set foot in Austria before she actually arrived there as ambassador—along with a caveat.
“You are not authorized to tell anybody,” Marsha warned. “You can tell Craig, but you cannot tell anyone else, including your children.”
Kathryn hung up the phone. Neither of us could stop grinning.
By the next day, we had started madly researching everything to do with Austria. Today you would immediately turn to Google, but in 1997 that wasn’t an option. So we tried to get our hands on every book, every newspaper story, and every magazine article that had anything to do with Austria. Although we couldn’t say a word about the appointment, we found ourselves integrating Austria into conversation after conversation. Someone would be talking about chocolate and we’d pipe up with the fact that Austrians mix a lot of chocolate into their coffee. Our upcoming tenure in Vienna was so exciting we couldn’t contain ourselves.
The White House wouldn’t announce Kathryn’s appointment until the fall, which meant we had to prepare the kids for our move without telling them why.
“German is just a very good language and you need to know it,” we told them when the German teacher showed up at the house. Luckily, they just took us at our word and participated in the language tutoring, no questions asked.
We also had a professor from Southern Methodist University in Dallas come over and give the whole family Austrian history lessons. And we engaged a young woman to teach us how to dance the Viennese waltz. We couldn’t tell anybody why we were doing any of this, but we sure had a lot of fun with our clandestine maneuvers.
When it was finally time to leave for our post, we had to drag the kids kicking and screaming. They absolutely did not want to leave their friends. Four years later, we had to drag them kicking and screaming back to the U.S. They absolutely did not want to leave their new friends.
We landed at the Vienna airport a few days before Thanksgiving 1997.
“We’re stopping on the runway so that the next U.S. ambassador and family can get off here,” the captain announced over the plane intercom.
While the rest of the passengers remained seated, we deplaned on the tarmac and climbed into the U.S. Embassy car, driven by Horst Kainz who would be Kathryn’s driver and close confidant for four years. Flashing lights and cameras greeted us as we got out of the car at the terminal, and then again in the VIP reception area as Kathryn surprised the attendant press by giving her speech in German.
In many countries the American ambassador is the first among equals in the diplomatic corps and generally one of the more recognized public figures. As a result, that night Kathryn and the rest of us, including our dog Reagan (the only Republican in the family), were on the news everywhere in Austria. And on the front page of the paper the next day and on a regular basis for the next four years.
An ambassador works to deliver and support our diplomatic messages, lead and manage the various departments represented in the embassy (from Commerce to Consulate to Security and more), initiate dialogues on issues of importance to the U.S., support our overseas business interests, and share our culture. Embassies, and in particular American embassies, have a unique opportunity to bring people together and address issues. To that end, within months of our arrival Kathryn held an official breakfast for American author, Holocaust survivor, and icon of the human conscience Elie Wiesel. This was his first visit to Austria since World War II and leaders of the Austrian government attended the breakfast. During the following four years, the embassy led, hosted, and engaged in countless other fruitful discussions on policy matters of import to the U.S.
An ambassador’s role also includes showcasing American artists. We held book readings for famous U.S. authors and poets, including Toni Morrison. We sponsored exhibits of prominent U.S. sculptors and painters—including Richard Serra, Jim Dine, and Joel Shapiro—at local museums. We promoted concerts of well-known U.S. musicians such as Wynton Marsalis and hosted the great Walter Cronkite and his wife, Betsy, after each New Year’s concert.
The embassy also supported American business, from defense, to pharma, to tourism, to—yes—wine. Promoting California wine is a challenge in Austria, where Austrian wines are oh-so-much better than their German counterparts, French is the standard, Italian is a decent substitute, and South African is what you opt for to be economical. Napa Valley was not on the radar. But the name Robert Mondavi was.
When we heard the Mondavis were coming to Austria, Kathryn invited them, along with business leaders and government representatives, to a dinner at the ambassador’s residence. We had not met Bob and Margrit Mondavi before and the chance to entertain the king and queen of Napa was very exciting. The guests assembled. We started the evening with a great Austrian Sekt (sparkling wine) and waited for the honorees. And waited. Austrians are very prompt, generally arriving 15 minutes before a party begins. We were pouring more Sekt than our guests wanted and the tension was rising.
All that irritation disappeared almost the moment our honorees walked in, especially once they explained why they were late. The Swarovski crystal company had flown Bob and Margrit from Vienna to another area of Austria earlier that day to talk to them about vineyards, among other things, and the couple had been delayed. Within minutes the group was enchanted. First with Bob, whose presence took over the room as he walked among the guests. Bob was a bigger-than-life guy with a personality to match. He was strong, as well as a little loud, but in a humble kind of a way and it showed. Margrit, who is Swiss born, is elegantly international and has this great laugh. When she speaks English she still has her Schweizerdeutsch accent. At the party, however, she spoke to everyone in her native German, which they loved.
That evening was the start of a wonderful friendship which continued to grow when we returned to Napa. Over the years, Margrit and Bob watched over us and helped us. Little did we know then how much—and how soon—we would need that assistance, a fact which became obvious at another official dinner just a few months later.
During our tenure in Austria, we held many more such official dinners, though perhaps (and thankfully) few as memorable. We also held a number of events at the residence that were just intended to be fun. While they were not representational, they probably had some diplomatic value. But our intention was nothing more than to create opportunities for people to spend time together. One of these was the continuation of an annual party Kathryn has given for her women friends for almost 25 years.
As amazing as our four years were, Craig couldn’t wait to return to his Dallas-based businesses, and we both couldn’t wait to focus on our now shared passion for wine.
Well, as it turns out, three of us actually returned from Vienna to the wine world. Whitney Staley, who while at the White House personnel office had delivered the news to Kathryn that the White House was going to give her the call, had also come to Vienna and worked closely with Kathryn in the embassy. During her time at post she met her now-husband, Jody Jacobson. After marrying in their hometown of Chicago (how coincidental is that?), they moved to San Francisco and Whitney, a treasured part of our lives, became vice president of the winery.
As for Kathryn, after four years of sporadic visits to Vienna’s local vineyards where the dirt around the vines had that same musty, dusty smell she had grown up with and loved so much, our return to the vines in Napa signified that she was truly home.