The most recent television series that I loved watching from beginning to end was “Madam Secretary.”
For five and a half good seasons, Tea Leoni played a dedicated public servant, first as Secretary of State and then as President. Week after week from 2014-2019, America got a look at the inner workings of the Foreign Service.
The State Department has had a special place in my heart for nearly 47 years. My first wife and I went to Austria in 1976 under State Department cover. She was actually a clerical employee for the CIA section in the embassy in Vienna, but we were part of the State community there.
Halfway through our tour there, I decided to take the entry exam for Foreign Service Officers. It was sort of a what-the-hell kind of thing. I had only completed a two-year degree and I had a very iffy employment record, so there was no way I was going to get hired even if I passed the test.
The one thing I remember from back then was how difficult it was supposed to be. When you figure only people who thought they were good enough would even try, the fact that something like 5 percent passed was really something. Back then, the test had six different parts, and in addition to having to get a certain score overall, you had to pass each and every section.
The big shock to the embassy that summer was that I passed the exam.
I was a nobody, an unemployed spouse. The only male one in the embassy. and I got very little respect from anyone. I was eligible to move on to the second stage of testing, but I knew it wouldn’t accomplish anything, so I passed.
Twenty-five years later, one of the two women I admire most in the world decided to take the exam. My daughter Pauline had just graduated from UCLA and she decided that she wanted to be in the Foreign Service.
The test had changed to two parts — one part questions and the second part an essay. Pauline passed the essay part, but came heart-breakingly close on the other part. She came up half a point short, something like 149.5 where 150 was needed.
She was discouraged, but took the test again and passed easily. She went to Washington, D.C., for the second stage of the testing and wound up getting hired to be an FSO.
Fiv years later, her brother Virgile did the same and both of my children were in the Foreign Service.
Pauline has done tours all over the world in nearly 20 years as an FSO — Cameroon, China, Indonesia, Jamaica, Guatemala and Tunisia. She took a little time out on her second, third and fourth tours to have babies, and she acquired three more wonderful children with her second marriage to a fellow FSO.
She has climbed to a high level and on her current tour is serving dual duty as chief consul in the embassy in Tunis as well as Consul General for Libya. If she didn’t have such good priorities — family first — I think she would probably be at least an ambassador someday.
I’m so proud of her. In fact, the only person I’m equally proud of is her brother. Virgile got into the department five years after his sister, and he has done tours in Greece, Mexico and Paraguay. He and his wife decided to change their focus several years back and they’re working on a. semi-permanent basis at Foggy Bottom in D.C.
So if you wonder why I would love a TV show about the State Department so much, it ought to be obvious.
It’s family.