Our Own Hall of Fame

 

JEFFERSON PATTERSON

 

DIPLOMAT PATTERSON

Uruguay Climax of 37-Year Stint

 

DAYTON DAILY NEWS   FEBRUARY 22, 1961

BY MARY ELLEN LYNCH

Daily News Staff Writer

 

Eighteenth of a Series

    

     When Jefferson Patterson, Dayton’s lone contribution to the ranks of career diplomats, retired in 1952 he announced:

     “I’m going to my farm on the Maryland coast.  If my crops fail I’ll be able to dig clams and catch fish.”

     But two years later clams were going undug and fish uncaught.  Patterson was back in harness—first as the United States representative to the formal opening of the first Sudanese parliament and then as the President’s special emissary to a trade fair in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

     Then, in 1956 the cigar-smoking diplomat emerged from retirement on a full-time basis to become U. S. ambassador to Uruguay.

     IT TURNED OUT to be his last post—so far, anyway.  For Patterson it was the crowning achievement of a 37-year career that began as a lowly class six officer in Peking, China, in 1921.

     The native Daytonian (his mother was Mrs. Julia Patterson Carnell, donor of the Dayton Art institute) was graduated from Yale in 1913 and three years later received a law diploma from Harvard.

     The Phi Beta Kappa followed up with a course in business administration and, during World War I, served overseas for two years as a second lieutenant.  He was a law clerk in Dayton for a year, then joined the State department.

     From there his career took him and his wife (the former Mary Marvin Breckinridge of Kentucky) to every continent except Australia.

     THEY LEARNED that the diplomatic set is white ties and fast packing.  From China, Patterson went to Bogota, Colombia, as second secretary of the U. S. embassy.  Then came assignments in Constantinople, Turkey…back to Washington to head protocol for the department…back, again to Turkey as consul.

     And then, two weeks later, off to Breslau, Germany.

     In 1935 Patterson went to Oslo, Norway as second secretary, advanced to first within a year.  As the clouds of World War II darkened he was assigned as first secretary in Berlin on Nov. 28, 1938.

     A year later Germany was at war with France and Britain but the United States was still neutral and Patterson was entrusted with the ticklish protection of British and French interests in Germany until his transfer to Lima, Peru, seven months before Pearl Harbor.

     After the war, Patterson served for a year in Brussels, Belgium, then—with the rank of class one foreign service officer, just a step behind career minister—he went to Cairo as counselor.

     THE GLOBE-GIRDLING specialist in legal protocol was named U. S. representative to the United Nation’s special commission on the Balkans in 1950.

     In that post he traveled widely in Greece at a time when guerrilla activity on the northern border threatened the country’s growing economic and political stability.  When the commission was disbanded in 1952, Patterson retired for the first time.

     He stepped down from the ambassadorship in Uruguay into retirement for the second time two years ago.  The Pattersons, who have two adopted children, are back on the 400-acre farm near Washington now.

     But the ex-Daytonian, who has seen the world maintain a keen interest in his hometown, has special interest in the Art Institute (to which he is a generous donor) and the Patterson Memorial homestead here.

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