Abroad for Her Country; Tales of a Pioneer Woman Ambassador in the U.S. Foreign Service

Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. xii, 352 pages. Illustrations. Index. Jean Mary Wilkowski (August 28, 1919 - July 27, 2016) was the first woman to serve as an American ambassador to an African country, when she was posted to Zambia from 1972 until 1976. Wilkowski taught at Barry College in Florida as a young woman. She joined the US Foreign Service in 1944, first as a Foreign Service Auxiliary, and then as a Foreign Service Officer, serving in Trinidad, Bogota, Santiago, Milan, Paris, and Rome. In 1966, she became Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM) at the American embassy in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. In 1969, she was briefly the Chargé d'affaires, the first woman to serve in that role in a Latin American embassy. In 1972, she was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order "pro Merito Melitense" by the Sovereign Military Order of Malta for her efforts to aid persons displaced by the 1969 Honduras/El Salvador hostilities. Wilkowski became the first woman to serve as an American ambassador to an African country,] when she was posted to Zambia in 1972. She organized Duke Ellington's visit to Zambia in 1973, and negotiated a Food for Peace loan from the United States. She remained as ambassador there until 1976. Wilkowski later served as the American coordinator of preparations for the United Nations Conference on Science and Technology for Development in 1977.
In retirement after 1980, Wilkowski was a visiting fellow at the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. She was a member of the DACOR Legacy Society. "In Abroad for Her Country, Jean M. Wilkowski shares the story of her extraordinary career in the U.S. Foreign Service during the last half of the twentieth century. Born in an era when few women sought professional careers, Wilkowski graduated from Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College and the University of Wisconsin and then rose through the ranks at the Department of State, from Vice Consul to the first woman U.S. Ambassador to an African country and the first woman acting U.S. Ambassador in Latin America.
During her thirty-five-year diplomatic career, Wilkowski was sent first as a vice consul to the Caribbean during World War II, when the Department of State was "even taking in 4-Fs and women." She moved on to more challenging assignments in Latin America and Europe. For much of her career, she specialized in protecting and promoting U.S. trade and investment interests in such posts as Paris, Milan, Rome, Santiago, and Geneva. She also served during a revolution in Bogotá, attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa, and the war between El Salvador and Honduras, when she called in U.S. humanitarian aid for 50,000 war-displaced persons. In 1977 she became coordinator of the U.S. preparation for the 1979 United Nations Conference on Science and Technology in Vienna. She worked closely with Notre Dame president Theodore Hesburgh, head of the U.S. delegation, and accompanied the delegation on its fact-finding visit to the Peoples' Republic of China.