A Diplomatic Ride for a Secretary of State Carry

A Diplomatic Ride for a Secretary of State Carry

By Jimmy Hatcher

My life in the 1970s was spent working for Governor and Mrs. Averell Harriman, he of the Union Pacific Railroad family and Roosevelt troubleshooter, she a daughter-in-law of Winston Churchill and a President Clinton supporter, eventually rewarded with the ambassadorship to France.

When I lived on the estate, people of great interest often dropped in and occasionally stayed overnight. Then Secretary of State Cyrus had the loan of the large guest house. His presence also brought in a heavy group of visitors, including one high official in the State Department who happened to be dating news anchor Diane Sawyer, an all-around nice person who eventually married film director Mike Nichols.

One day at a large luncheon to which I had been included, Diane told the story of her role when she had been the reigning United States “Junior Miss.” She said she had been asked to be hostess to the very first Junior Miss who, as it turned out, was no longer a junior, or a miss. The pageant director had taken Diane’s glasses off, and she had no contacts and unfortunately not much sight.

It seems the original Junior Miss had traveled quite a distance that day and was in need of the ladies room.

Diane asked someone for directions, and with blurry vision, had actually led her new charge right into and then back out of the men’s room.

While Secretary of State Vance was in the guest house, he had to have security, and his team was there 24 hours a day. At first, they hunkered down in the log cabin next to the main house. But Mrs. Harriman decided she wanted me to move into that cabin, so the security people had to camp out using the tack room for toilet facilities.

Vance’s daughter had gone to nearby Foxcroft School and one time she was given permission to use one of the Harriman horses to compete in the school’s annual horse show, instead of riding one of the Foxcroft horses.

I got to the tack room the morning of the Foxcroft show to find the security team in a tizzy. It seems that word had gotten to them that Secretary Vance was going to ride out to Foxcroft with Mrs. Harriman, and only one of them had ever been on a horse. It wasn’t the secretary, and he even needed a western saddle.

I decided to have some fun and told one of them that a western saddle might be hazardous because Mrs. Harriman and the Secretary were almost certainly going to jump some fences and coops. Lots of them. In the end, the security team and the Vances went to the horse show… As spectators.