Victor B. Olason--an appreciation.

AuthorChatten, Robert
PositionIn memoriam

Born Vigfus Bjorgvin Olason in Seattle on June 5, 1930, he was of Icelandic heritage, a son of Vigfus Bjorgvin and Carolina Stephanson Olason. For years, I thought I might be the only other person in the Agency aware that "Victor" was a nom de preference, a nom de convenience.

Vic was my oldest and dearest friend in the Foreign Service. He was an example of what USIA's Junior Office Program was supposed to produce through boots on the ground seasoning, leading step by step to leadership in international public affairs. He served in eight countries over a 36-year career. He learned five languages and, when he retired in 1995, only four years before USIA disappeared, he was one of only four officers with the rank of career minister. If memory serves, he had become one of only two officers to be Area Director of two regions.

He came to USIA knowing journalism from the ground up. As an undergraduate, he covered campus news for the Seattle Times. He became editor of the student newspaper at the University of Washington and the Times hired him after graduation to walk a beat, be a police reporter and work the city desk. Vic could walk into a newsroom anywhere and be in familiar territory. Foreign journalists often could sense this and responded. He was a friend of many foreign correspondents, whose legitimate functions he understood and, when necessary, helped Ambassadors to understand. He was helpful to newsmen when he could and earned their respect when he couldn't.

We met when we joined USIA in September 1959 in a JOT class of 11, which produced three area directors and a Counselor of the Agency. We cut a training class to see Khruschev arrive as a guest at Blair House. As with many of you here with most of the 20th century on your hard drives, Vic saw, sometimes with an active role, many of the big events and players of the era.

His USIA career started in Santiago, where Barbara White and Hew Ryan, future mandarins of the Agency, were role models. Come the Kennedy Administration, Vic was named to a new group of Alliance for Progress information officers, with an office in the AID mission, working with Peruvian media to interpret the new look in U.S.-Latin American relations. Those relations

Included one of the largest initial groups of Peace Corps volunteers, headed in Lima by his friend Frank Mankiewicz, a future political mandarin in the making.

When we joined the Foreign Service, the book on ideal career trajectories saw officers in the...

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