THE MEN WHO DECIDE OUR DESTINIES
He advises the White House in times of grave crises, while his wife decorates
their home one moment and entertains premiers the next By JACK RYAN
diplomat. In background and family life, he is
contrary to the image. A career diplomat, he won
ambassadorial rank by achievement, unlike the
more familiar American ambassador whose ap
pointment is a reward for contributions.
Son of a pioneer rancher, Thompson worked his
way through the University of Colorado, a long
way in tuition and geography from the elite
Eastern schools which once provided most of our
diplomats. His wife, the former Jane Monroe
Goelet, is an elegantly gowned hostess at a formal
reception for hundreds but she also paints the
walls in their new home on an elm-lined street
in the Kalorama section of Washington.
This house is the first the Thompsons have
owned, their previous ones being government resi
dences. It was purchased partly with a $5,000
Rockefeller Public Service Award, administered
by Princeton University, which Thompson recently
won for his work in foreign affairs and interna
tional operations. The award was very timely
just as he was caught between Washington prop
erty prices and State Department salaries.
In setting up housekeeping, Mrs. Thompson,
copper-haired and cream-complexioned, has had
her own crises to underlie the global ones her hus
band helps shoulder. Since last summer, her house
hold has been scattered between Moscow and a
four-story Georgian house in Washington's am
bassador row. Such upheavals are nothing new to
a diplomat's wife and, according to the Thomp
sons' eldest daughter, Jenny, 13, Mother had a
perfect plan : a vacation in Colorado, then to their
new home in Washington, and, "when Daddy comes
in the door, we'll hand him overalls and stick a
' paintbrush in his hand."
The Versatile Mrs. Thompson
Thompson's illness changed that, and Mrs.
Thompson spent most of the autumn splattering
the walls and herself with paint Yet with perfect
aplomb she climbed off her ladder one day to hold
a luncheon for six including Anastaa Mikoyan,
first-deputy premier of the Soviet Union.
By his mid-408, Thompson's peripatetic career
had left him a "retiring bachelor, charming but
perhaps aloof with women." Then in June, 1948,
he sailed on the S. S. Satumia for a conference .
in Rome. Aboard, he met a young divorcee sailing
for a European holiday. Daughter of a research
chemist in Winchester, Mass., Mrs. Goelet had the
well-spoken poise of a properly educated Boston
suburbanite and a very individual vivaciousness
that induced Thompson to follow up their ship
board friendship with rendezvous throughout
Europe. That fall the couple returned to the
United States to be married Oct 2.
Mrs. Thompson has managed households in
Rome, Vienna, Moscow, and Washington, and
about the only drawback she and her husband
found was in raising Jenny and their youngest
daughter, Sherry, 8. An ambassador's residence,
they explain, is also a semi-office; parties, recep
tions, and talks disrupted the steady life the
Thompsons tried to give their girls.
Then, too, there were long separations. Thomp
son recalls that the day after Sherry was born
he left Vienna for a "personal" trip to London.
Newspapers were told he was buying clothes and
gifts. Actually, his assignment was to help bring
together the Yugoslav and Italian governments,
then in a territorial dispute over Trieste. Secret
negotiations, expected to last a few weeks,
dragged out eight months while Thompson "won
dered what our girl looked like." When an agree
ment was finally reached, Thompson had his first
headlined achievement, but he didn't stay around
for the celebrations.
The GirU Find Life Exciting
But the girls recognize no drawbacks in the
life they have known. "It's exciting with people
always coming and going," Jenny says. Both
children are affectionate toward their reserved
father, draping themselves around his slim shoul
der and waist; it is characteristic of Thompson
that he carries them about neither rumpling his
neatly knotted tie nor his gracious manners.
The Thompson home reflects a collector's taste,
not wealth. Antique Venetian coffee tables,
French provincial chairs, Italian tables, and
"some good old American stuff" manage to blend
warmly beneath old Russian icons and a domi
nating portrait of Mrs. Thompson.
Mrs. Thompson's friends had advised her to
find a home outside Washington, "but that would
have added commuting to Tommy's long sched
ule," she says. "This way he's only 10 minutes
from his office and, as often as not, is home for
that important six-o'clock time for children
that seems to be crisis time dinner, homework,
television, critiques of the day, and plans for
tomorrow. Their father should be around then,
even if he has a dinner engagement later."
The ambassador's wife is properly noncommittal
about whether her husband brings home his office
problems. Not so Jenny: "Daddy brings all his
problems to me, and I help him make decisions."
She pauses until she is sure her audience is prop
erly startled by a 13-year-old influencing inter
national relations. Then, impishly, she continues:
"When he goes to a conference, he always asks
me what tie he should wear and what shaving
lotions smell best"
As for Thompson himself, 34 years of diploma
tic service have not diminished his enthusiasm
(Continued on page 6)
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Ambassador Thompson, wife Jane, and daughters Jenny
and Sherry (seated) live inan elegant Washington house.
The furnishings, like the valued Russian icon above the
mantel, have been gathered from around the world.
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