The Diplomat Next Door

Retired and active foreign service workers love northern Michigan

Nov. 15, 2014

The US ambassador to Oman might live just up the road on the Old Mission Peninsula. Other foreign service retirees have traded Moscow, Kabul or Karachi for Benzie, Grand Traverse or Leelanau.

There are even a handful of former or current CIA operatives in the region, though those folks are especially shy about details -- and interviews for stories like this.

Not only are the foreign service alumni fascinating in their own right, the burgeoning group is also delivering more international opportunities for Northwestern Michigan College students, as well as an impressive lineup of speakers at Traverse City’s International Affairs Forum.

MUSCAT TO OLD MISSION

President Obama nominated Greta C. Holtz to be US ambassador to Oman in 2012.

Now the career diplomat splits time between Muscat and a vacation home on Old Mission.

Holtz didn’t grow up in Traverse City but she’s been visiting all her life.

Her great grandparents lived in Springfield, Ill. when they decided to find a place to escape the summer heat in 1898. They and 18 or so neighbors built cottages near Old Mission Harbor.

"All these families have been going up there for over a hundred years," she told Express in an interview from Oman. Holtz said she’s only missed a couple of her 55 summers.

Now, Old Mission is a cool break from the heat of the Middle East "I love them both," she said. "Here, I’m at work and I’m at a big job, very busy. There, I’m on vacation."

Holtz said her northern Michigan neighbors don’t flinch when they learn her occupation.

"I don’t think [they are] surprised – they always ask a lot of good questions," she said. "They’re worried about terrorism; instability."

Holtz would retire full-time to Old Mission one day but she said her Mexican husband does not like the winter.

"I love it up there," she said. "I think it’s the most beautiful place on earth."

INTERNATIONAL HUSBAND-WIFE TEAM

Perhaps the most high-profile former diplomats turned locals are Jack Segal and Karen Puschel, who spent their careers together around the world.

The couple served in Africa, the Middle East and Asia; helped negotiate nuclear nonproliferation with the Soviet Union during the Cold War; and they were tapped to establish an American consulate in Yekaterina, Russia in the wake of the Soviet collapse.

They chose to retire in Traverse City because Puschel’s mother lives in Northport.

The couple also said they chose northern Michigan over Washington D.C. as a place to raise their daughter.

"You don’t want to come back and start a whole new place, independent of everybody else in your lives," said Puschel, who grew up in Jackson, Mich. "There’s no point of us moving to Idaho where nobody lives. So you kind of chose where you would live by other people in your lives."

Segal grew up in Philadelphia. The couple met at the State Department and has been married 24 years.

The couple has stayed busy in retirement, maintaining connections in Washington while running the IAF as co-chairs. Segal also teaches at NMC, where he’s developed a course called American Foreign Policy Since World War II.

"It will be from a practitioner’s perspective, since we were both practitioners," Segal said. "We’re not theorists. We both studied political science, but then you get into the real world and it’s a different story. It will be a chance to expose the kids "¦ to get one step beyond basic political science theory."

BETTER THAN YOUTUBE

Puschel said it’s extraordinary how many people with foreign service or international business backgrounds now live in the region.

It’s been a windfall to the IAF, which has been able to attract world-class speakers.

And that’s added to the area’s cultural resources.

"You always have people who move here because of the beauty of the area and that sort of thing, but now when you think about the stimulation opportunities – the National Writers Series, the film festival, in addition to all the other things"¦ " Puschel said.

The IAF events create a community of people who have an interest in foreign affairs, she said. This, along with expanded international opportunities at NMC, will change the lives of some young people.

"We know a student who was on the exchange trip to China and he had his Chinese brother living here. And that’s how he wants to spend his life. He’s studying in Shanghai now for the next year. And that’s not all that unusual," Puschel said. "It happens through that personal connection."

PICNICS IN KABUL

Ted Curran believes one reason there are so many former foreign service pros around is because many come from families connected to places like the Congregational Summer Assembly at the west end of Crystal Lake.

Curran, whose parents were missionaries, said a dedication to service contributed to his decision to go into diplomacy. Curran was a management officer at the State Department and spent a career at embassies around the world.

Curran’s connection to Benzie County is through his wife, Marcia, whose roots in the area go back to 1900. They met at grad school in New York City.

The couple began their foreign service careers in the 1950s. Curran said three of their most interesting postings were Kabul, Yemen and Morocco.

In Kabul, in the mid-1970s, he and his family enjoyed picnics in the countryside without fear of violence. In Yemen, he helped establish an embassy without the benefit of an electric grid. In Morocco, he played golf with the king.

In retirement, Curran said the couple was called to Michigan.

"After living for a while in Maryland, we decided it was really silly, when all our family connections were out here," Curran said. "It’s increasingly getting more and more attractive to live here instead of sitting in some horrible place in Florida and staring at a golf course."

In addition to work with the IAF, the Currans helped establish the Michigan Land Use Institute, they’ve been active in local politics and the League of Women Voters, and they’ve worked for conservation in the region.

DIPLOMAT OR SPY?

Sometimes the line is blurred -- rightly or mistakenly -- between "diplomat" and "spy."

Puschel and Segal said being confused for CIA was usually not a problem during their careers...with one exception "Typically people did not assume we were spies," Puschel said. "We were diplomats doing our job."

The exception was in Yekaterinburg in 1993. Russia’s fourth largest city that had been the center of the Soviet industrial complex closed to the West for 70 years.

"Naturally, they assumed we were there for nefarious purposes," Puschel said. "We were openly tailed, openly recorded, and I’m sure our Russian staff was subjected to "˜discussions.’" Puschel said the surveillance didn’t really matter because they didn’t have a secret agenda.

Stan Otto, a retired State Department diplomat now residing in Benzie County, has a cagier answer when asked if he was actually a spy.

"Almost everybody jokes about that, but how could they know? And if they asked, I couldn’t tell them anyway. So it’s one of those unknowables," he said.

Otto offers a hint of his allegiance when he talks about the State Department versus the CIA.

"I personally think that the State Department is more effective than the CIA in most ways," he said. "The CIA’s only mandate is to report on what’s happening in different countries. They’re not allowed to give any kind of policy advice, whereas that’s our bread and butter."

Today, Otto enjoys singing with his men’s chorus quartet, the Shoreliners.

AROUND THE WORLD TO INTERLOCHEN

After decades spent working in foreign aid around the world – from Pakistan in 1958, to Ghana, to Nigeria, to India, and in West Africa, through coups and civil wars, Gordon Evans and his wife, Barbara, ended up on the isthmus between Green and Duck lakes in Interlochen.

Evans followed a high-ranking career at the State Department with 11 years running the International House, a boarding house for international grad students in New York City where his bosses were Henry Kissinger and Gerald Ford.

After retirement in 1993, the Evans ran a bed and breakfast near the Interlochen Center for the Arts, where Barbara was a student in 1950.

They hosted thousands of guests; including Interlochen families from all over the world and celebrities like Robin Williams, Bruce Willis, and Demi Moore. They sold the inn in 2012 and it’s now a home for autistic children.

"She had been working on brainwashing me from courtship," Evans said of how he wound up in northern Michigan. He grew up in upstate New York and thought he would retire in New Hampshire or Vermont.

He said he owed it to his wife to settle where she chose.

"It’s hard to be a spouse of a foreign service officer," he said. "When we moved over here to where we are now, that was our 26th major move."

Evans was one of the founding members of the International Affairs Forum back in 1994.

Today the 82-year-old volunteers at Munson Medical Center and helps build scenery for Interlochen plays.

NEGOTIATING WITH THE RUSSIANS

Jay Johnson grew up in Dearborn, where he studied Russian in high school. He studied law at U-M and eventually rose to the level of Deputy General Counsel of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration at the Commerce Department.

Though it might not sound like a position that would require frequent travel to Moscow, it actually was, because Johnson negotiated fishing treaties, including one with Canada, Japan, and Russia over salmon in the northern Pacific.

"It was one of the last treaties that the Soviet Union signed," Johnson said. "It has a very long title which I can’t exactly remember, but it was something like the "˜International Convention for the Conservation of the Living Marine Resources of the Bering Sea Ecosystem.’ At any rate, it’s still in effect."

Negotiations required frequent trips to Moscow before and after the fall of the Soviet Union.

"Every time we would go, it would change. The first time I went to Moscow they had nothing but these little black cars. There were black limousines and sort-of Chevy Nova-sized cars. That’s all you saw on the street," he said. "They had these great big magnificent boulevards and there was no traffic on them. If you go back now, they’re jammed. You can’t get anywhere."

Johnson ended up in northern Michigan because of his wife’s family.

"My wife and I, we met at the University of Michigan, and when we became serious, I was dragged up here to see if I could pass the summer cabin test, and apparently I did," Johnson said. "We’ve been fortunate enough to bring our kids up almost every summer."

They’ve been permanent residents since 2005.

One of his three children, a daughter, now works for the State Department in Latin America.