Background
Born in Trenton, New Jersey, he was the son of noted psychiatrist Doctor Edgar Bright Funkhouser and Evelyn Hayes.
Born in Trenton, New Jersey, he was the son of noted psychiatrist Doctor Edgar Bright Funkhouser and Evelyn Hayes.
He attended Taft School before entering Princeton University where he was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society and Sigma Xi, the Honorary Scientific Research Association. He graduated from Princeton in 1939.
He served as United States Ambassador to Gabon. Though Funkhouser had a deferment working as a geologist in Venezuela, he volunteered for the United States. Army Air Corps during World World War II and was with the Cal-Aeronautical Academy Army Air Cadets Class 43-J. Following training in Texas at Kelly Air Force Base, Cox Field, Paris, Jones Field, Bonham, Brooks Air Force Base, and Bergstrom Air Force Base, Austin, he was stationed stateside in Sedalia Army Air Base, Jackson Army Air Base, and Baer Army Airfield. His first flights of the war began in August 1944 with the 9th Combat Cargo out of Moran Town, India to Myitkyina, Burma.
He transferred to Warazup, Burma in January 1945.
After the war, he worked as a geologist for Shell Oil domestically and Standard Oil of New Jersey overseas. Passing the career United States. Foreign Service exams, Funkhouser became a Regional Petroleum Officer for the Middle East, assigned to Iraq, Syria and Lebanon in 1953 and then Bucharest, Damascus, and Moscow.
He served as United States Ambassador to Gabon from August 9, 1969 to August 2, 1970 and then served in the Vietnam War, appointed as civilian deputy to Lieutenant General Michael Davison at Bien Hoa Air Base.
Interviews conducted by Charles Stuart Kennedy, director of the Foreign Affairs Oral History Program, covering Funkhouser"s work in Damascus, Moscow, Paris, Gabon, and Vietnam during the period of 1955-1972, are archived at Georgetown University.
After 33 years serving in various Foreign Service Specialist positions, Funkhouser retired from the Department of State in 1975 and moved to Scotland as an International Affairs Advisor to the Texas Eastern Corporation. While there, he wrote several papers which today are deposited at the Oil and Gas Institute in the University of Aberdeen. After five years in Scotland, he returned to Washington in 1980 and became the Director of International Affairs in the Environmental Protection Agency and a consultant to the United States Department of Education before appointment to his final position as Director of International Activities at the Young Astronaut Council.