Jean Farr Wollam was an American diplomat. She served at the United States Embassies of nine countries, including Germany, Vietnam and Nigeria.
Background
Jean Farr Wollam was born on October 5, 1917, in Holyoke, Massachusetts, United States. She was one of five children and the only daughter of Howard and Nettie Farr. Her mother's family was traced back to Richard Warren, who was one of the passengers on the Pilgrim ship Mayflower.
Career
Jean Farr began her career as a secretary at some private industry in Holyoke, Massachusetts in 1935. From 1941 to 1946 she worked as a civil servant at the United States Government. Jean came to the Foreign Service at age 28 in 1946 after World War II ended. All told, she lived in nine countries, visited dozens of others, studied seven languages and had friends and acquaintances all over the world. Her first post was in war-torn Berlin where she was sent to help staff the new American Mission to Germany under the command of General Dwight Eisenhower. She was transferred to Frankfurt two years later during the Berlin Blockade in which the Soviet Union denied western allies access to the city, the first major international crisis of the Cold War. Her next assignment was Bogota, Columbia. Living high in the Andes in a city she described as "having its head in the clouds," gave Jean her first taste of Latin culture. Her next post was in Monterrey, Mexico. From there she was stationed in Washington D.C. where she was sworn in as a Foreign Service Officer, a full-fledged diplomat. But she was only four years stateside before she was sent to Saigon in the spring of 1958, where she was kept busy as the assistant personnel officer, administering to a staff of several hundred Americans and more than 1,000 Vietnamese.
From Vietnam, her career took Jean to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and she had another stint in Washington D.C. before she was assigned to Beirut, Lebanon. Her beachfront apartment had a view of the Mediterranean Sea from every window. Athens, Greece would be her home for the next four years, her longest tour since her career began. From there she traveled to Lagos, Nigeria, where she bought a brand new 1971 Ford Mustang - a car so prized by the Nigerians that one day a soldier followed her home and offered to buy it. She said she would need it for at least the next two years and he said, "I'll wait." Finally, her last post was Rome, Italy. Fluent in Italian, she adored the Eternal City and while living in Italy she traveled all over the country making stops in Venice, Naples, Milan, and Pompeii. In Sicily, she was part of a group that hiked Mount Etna as it was erupting.
After 30 years of foreign assignments, Jean retired in 1976. She settled in Rancho Bernardo and later moved to Carlsbad. Jean spent her later years in a beautiful apartment by the sea, surrounded by the art she had collected from around the world, where she golfed and lunched and attended operas and musicals and corresponded with her many friends from around the world while making new ones in Carlsbad.
In her 90s, Wollam wrote her memoirs in a book called "Around the World in 30 Years." In it, she tells the many stories of her life, from traveling to the Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, Switzerland to her audience with Pope Pius XII, to getting a diplomatic promotion from President John F. Kennedy in the Rose Garden at the White House.
Jean was a proud member of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants.
Personality
Jean was witty, intelligent, and her mind was sharp. She also did an extensive amount of traveling. She once made a list of the treasures she had gathered from around the world and the places they were from included Brazil, Russia, Venezuela, Egypt, Jordan, Holland, Sweden, Denmark, Czechoslovakia, Israel, Taiwan, United Kingdom, Finland, China, Italy, Japan and Turkey.