[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 17 (Monday, February 4, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S596-S598]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  TRIBUTE TO AMBASSADOR JAMES W. SPAIN

  Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, I remember being on the Senate floor on 
September 12, 2001. That was the day after the horrendous attack on our 
Nation. It was the only time in my 33 years here that I can remember 
the public galleries being closed. There was an unprecedented amount of 
security around the Capitol. But every Senator came onto the floor of 
the Senate that day. We wanted to indicate to the world that this 
symbol of democracy would not close. I especially remember

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that the closed visitors galleries, however, contained two people: 
former Ambassador James Spain and my wife Marcelle.
  This memory, and so many more, came back to me in January of this 
year when Ambassador Spain's son Stephen informed me that my dear 
friend Jim had died on January 2 in Wilmington, NC.
  It is hard to think of anyone in public life I have met during my 
years as a Senator who is as memorable as Jim Spain. He has touched me 
with his dignity, his sense of humanity, and his honesty as no one else 
could. He was the truest of public servants--one who cared for his 
country and those his position influenced actually more than he cared 
for himself.
  I first met Jim decades ago when he was the Ambassador to Turkey and 
I visited him in Ankara. Even though Turkey was under military rule at 
that time, he invited people from across the political spectrum to meet 
with the two of us at his residence. It was there I saw the abilities 
of one of the finest Ambassadors to ever represent our great country as 
he brought these sometimes adversaries together to talk in what he 
called his ``game room'' or play room.
  Turkey was under a dusk-to-dawn curfew at that time, but I had to 
leave in the middle of the night to get back to the United States. Jim 
arranged for a military escort to take me and to open the airport so 
that my military plane I was using could leave. I still remember ``His 
Excellency,'' as so many of the Turks called him, waving goodbye from 
his front door in his pajamas, his bathrobe, and his slippers about 2 
a.m.
  We kept in close touch when he returned to Washington, through his 
ambassadorship in Sri Lanka and later retirement. He and Marcelle and I 
once sat up talking half the night when he was a guest in our house. 
After every one of these meetings, I would tell others that I felt I 
had been with a close member of my own family and my conscience had 
been touched in a very special and very helpful way.
  I wish every member of the Foreign Service could read Ambassador 
Spain's book entitled ``In Those Days.'' I was privileged to write, 
along with John Kenneth Galbraith and Father Andrew Greeley, a cover 
blurb for that book. In my blurb I said:

       From boyhood glimpses of a strutting Al Capone, to post-war 
     Japan, a stint with the CIA, and a fascinating foreign 
     service career--this is a life worth living. History is 
     shaped by extraordinary people like Ambassador Spain. His 
     Irish eloquence makes the difficult look easy while his 
     humanity touches your soul.

  Another wrote:

       Jim Spain's contribution in assisting CIA Director Allen 
     Dulles to make President Eisenhower get the pronunciation of 
     Prime Minister Nehru's first name right during the latter's 
     official visit to Washington is a typical foreign service 
     moment. ``Heady stuff for a 28-year-old,'' noted Jim Spain.

  Even today I cannot pronounce former Prime Minister Nehru's first 
name correctly. I cannot think of the number of times when traveling 
with Ambassador Spain he whispered in my ear to make sure I got the 
names correct.
  In the end, it was his humanity that touched us all. It was as though 
his great intelligence and ability was only the pedestal to allow the 
humanity to shine through.
  Tissa Jayatilaka--and I do wish Ambassador Spain was here to make 
sure I come anywhere close to pronouncing this name correctly--wrote:

       News reached us over the weekend past that Jim Spain's time 
     on earth had run out. Heaven knows this world of ours cannot 
     afford to do without human beings of his caliber and yet 
     there is only so much that an individual can do for humanity 
     before he, too, moves unto the dusty descend.
       Ambassador Spain was one of the most decent, gentle, 
     caring, and perceptive human beings I have known to-date.
       He was unfailingly generous and kind to his fellow-
     companions on this bittersweet journey on earth that we 
     travel on for a while. It was indeed a privilege to have 
     worked with him briefly and shared a long and fruitful 
     friendship with him thereafter.
       I first came to know him during my days in The Colombo Plan 
     Bureau in the 1980s. He had arrived in Colombo some time in 
     1985 to head the U.S. Mission here. Until then, Sri Lanka was 
     the only South Asian country he had not lived in before.
       He was to make up for this in the years ahead, when in 
     1989, consequent to his retirement from the U.S. foreign 
     service, he made Sri Lanka his home.
       This decision of Ambassador Spain was all the more 
     remarkable because the last several years of the 80s was a 
     period when most Sri Lankans were seeking to run away from 
     their land of birth.
       Jim Spain not only stayed behind, but also did a great deal 
     discreetly to assist this beleaguered country of ours to save 
     itself from self-destruction.

  This person goes on to write:

        . . . It was several years later that I came to know that 
     only a couple of years prior to his coming to Colombo that 
     Ambassador Spain himself had suffered a monumental personal 
     loss.
       Consequent to a memorable family reunion after some years 
     during Thanksgiving 1983 at a resort in West Virginia, Jim 
     Spain, his wife Edith and daughter Sikandra bade farewell to 
     their sons and brothers Patrick, William and Stephen and 
     began to wend their way through country roads back to 
     Washington.
       Near Leesburg, Virginia, their light fiber-glass car was 
     hit by a huge old station wagon going 85 miles per hour, 
     driven by a local football player who was not wearing the 
     glasses his license prescribed. He was not even scratched, 
     but the Spains had to be evacuated to the Washington Hospital 
     Trauma Center by helicopter.
       By next morning, Sikandra was dead, Edith was clinging to 
     life in an intensive-care unit and Jim was immobilized with a 
     variety of fractures and bruises.
       A few weeks later, Edith died.
       With the help of his sons and his strong spirituality, Jim 
     Spain bore his irreparable loss with fortitude.

  I read all that into the Record so my colleagues would know what a 
man he was.
  I have lost a good friend. Marcelle and I send our condolences to his 
sons Patrick, Stephen, and William; their wives, Barbara, Beth, and 
Anu; to his grandchildren Jeanne, James, Aidan, Katherine, and Rachel; 
and to all within his family.
  For my part, I know I have gained more from knowing him than I could 
ever say.
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record Ambassador 
Spain's biography.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

       Ambassador Spain was born in 1926 in Chicago, Illinois, 
     where he attended St. Brendan's Parochial School and Quigley 
     Seminary where his classmates included priest/author Andrew 
     Greeley and ``Vatican Banker'' Paul Marcinkus. He received a 
     masters degree from the University of Chicago and a PhD from 
     Columbia University.
       Ambassador Spain served in World War II, for a time serving 
     on General Douglas MacArthur's staff as a photographer in 
     occupied Japan. He entered the Foreign Service in 1951, and 
     spent the entirety of his career in government service. His 
     assignments took him to Pakistan, Turkey, Tanzania, the UN, 
     and Sri Lanka.
       His first post was as Vice Consul in Karachi in 1951. 
     Following that he returned to the U.S. where he lived, mostly 
     in Washington, DC, until 1969. He was appointed as Charge 
     d'Affaires to Pakistan in 1969, Consul General in Istanbul 
     from 1970-1972, Deputy Chief of Mission in Ankara (1972-
     1974), Ambassador to Tanzania (1975-1979) and Deputy 
     Ambassador to the United Nations under Andrew Young briefly 
     in 1979, Ambassador to Turkey from 1980-1981, and finally as 
     Ambassador to Sri Lanka from 1985-1988. He retired as a 
     Career Minister in the Foreign Service and remained in Sri 
     Lanka until 2006, when he returned to the United States. He 
     has been living in Wilmington, NC since then.
       He was the author of numerous books, including In Those 
     Days, American Diplomacy in Turkey, The Way of the Pathans, 
     Pathans of the Latter Day, and a series of novels featuring 
     Dodo Dillon. He contributed articles on foreign affairs to a 
     variety of publications.
       Ambassador Spain lived a distinguished life of service to 
     his country and dedication to his friends and family. He was 
     a remarkably able diplomat who drew on his own odyssey from 
     an impoverished youth on the South Side of Chicago--the son 
     of a streetcar conductor and a seamstress who were Irish 
     immigrants--to attending receptions with Presidents and Prime 
     Ministers to inspire those around him to seek the best for 
     themselves and their country. He met adversity with strength, 
     rudeness with grace, and challenges with enthusiasm. He 
     played pivotal roles in maintaining and strengthening the 
     United States alliance with Turkey, in bringing about a 
     peaceful transition to majority rule in Zimbabwe, and 
     strengthening the United States' relations with all the 
     countries of the subcontinent. He was most proud not of the 
     headlines that he had a part in, but of the headlines that 
     never had to be written, thanks to his work defusing tensions 
     between nations.
       One of his earliest memories of Chicago was being taken by 
     his father to watch Al Capone walk through City Hall. His 
     glimpse of the legendary gangster impressed many, among them 
     Jawarlahal Nehru, the first prime minister of India, who once 
     held up a reception line just to hear about it.
       James W. Spain, 81, died on January 2, 2008 of natural 
     causes in Wilmington, NC.
       He was very pleased to have outlived Sen. Jesse Helms of 
     North Carolina, but sorely

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     disappointed not to have lived to see the next Democrat in 
     the White House.
       He was preceded in death by his beloved wife Edith and 
     daughter Sikandra. He is survived by his sons, Patrick, 
     Stephen and William and his grandchildren, Jeanne, James, 
     Aidan, Katherine, and Rachel.

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