An Unnecessary Death

By Dean Bentley

AN UNNECESSARY DEATH by Dean Bentley

I was hired by the Department of State the same week I took the Civil Service Exam in Washington, DC. I was promoted and blessed with wonderful years working for some great men. And those brilliant men decided I needed to get into Foreign Service, State Department's Diplomatic Corps, as I had the right temperament and abilities. I thought I understood how diplomats were selected; but I had a lot to learn, because that's when I ran into a truly insane diplomat. That evil man actually caused the death of an outstanding employee of the Department of State; and he knew there were two witnesses to the crime. He would stalk our lives for decades. This is that story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9781638747291

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An Unnecessary Death

Dean Bentley

ISBN 978-1-63874-728-4 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63874-730-7 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-63874-729-1 (digital)

Copyright © 2022 by Dean Bentley

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Dedication

Introduction

How It All Got Started

I wanted an education, but I needed a job

I was hired by the Department of State!

Visa Office and the Cuban Waiver Section

State Department's Medical Division

I'm Good at Names

Getting to Know a New Friend

Can You Cook?

There Is Danger Everywhere

The Absolute Worst Case Ever

You need to sell me that button, Redhead

IBM's Best Present Ever

Dean, You Are the Type of Person We Need in Foreign Service

The Olympic Flame Followed Me to Tokyo

The American Consulate Fukuoka, Japan, 1964

Dr. Harold G. Beeson's personal letter

Everybody Knew but Nobody Did Anything

Unwanted

Taking Advantage of My Government Assignment

A Blue Plate Special…or Was It Murder?

Mr. Nose's obituary

Oh my God! He killed him!

Under Shoesmith's heel

Lost in Translation I Hope

Staying Close to the Yoshida Family

The Honor of My Presence

Upstaging the Principal Officer without Trying

The Consulate Employees and Children

Marcella Comstock and our Hita trip

Hosting a Dinner Party

Time to Check Out

Getting Good News from Ralph

Losing My Good Friend

Extended for Another Six Months

Miss Bentley's Beach Party

The Absolute Best Six Months of My Tour

The Biggest Surprise of My Tour

Nor Long Remembered

Reporting for Duty

Walking off the job

Reunited with my Best Friend

Learning the truth about State Department

Foreign Service Criminals

Ralph Opens Up about His Opinions on Policy

Sharing Happy Thoughts with Ralph

Going to the White House

Getting the Second Desk

Collecting Negatives around the Office

Equal Partners

Keeping My Eye on That Top Position

Getting a Look at That Political Officer's House

The Big Step Up

I Survived but Only by a Miracle

Another Knife in the Back

Keeping Pace with the Workload

Mr. Spears Circling the Globe

EYES ONLY

Getting a new Executive Secretary

Ralph Backslides

I Was Losing My Best Friend

Our Co-worker Arrives

A Major Flap for State Department

Taking Some Time Off

Some Insanity Is Never-Ending

Epilogue

About the Author

In the first place, I am forever thankful for the blessing of being born in my beloved Granddad's home. While my father fought in WWII, I lived there for more than two and a half years, aging alongside his two sons, Thaddeus Daniel Curbow and Shannon Curbow as if they were my siblings. They watched out for me and took care of me in that beautiful rural setting. As a young child in the far north, I was so grateful each time we hurried back to Alabama so I could enjoy that peaceful life on Granddad's small farm, helping gather vegetables from the garden and saying the blessing over the wonderful home cooking. And Granddad always held my hand as we walked down the mountain to the church that his father and another neighboring minister had pioneered in 1875. I was at home when I was there with them. They were always my family.

Dedication

Years later, when I returned to Alabama to settle down, I was blessed with a wonderful nephew David Pannell who was entirely too kind and generous with his time. I cannot describe what his loss meant to me as he was taken too young.

My nephew Daniel Pannell has allowed me to seek his talents when my computer needs special attention, which is often. And he does work magic which is lucky as I was born in the last century and can't keep up with all the foreign language required to use a computer these days.

Perhaps the most important family I knew in Japan was that of Dr. Shinji Yoshida. We met on New Years day in Hiradoguchi, Japan. His wife and their two sons, Dr. Tetsuji Yoshida and Dr. Yoshikazu Yoshida, completed the family atmosphere I enjoyed from then until I lost my last Yoshida friend in 2020. Dr. Yoshikazu Yoshida worked for months until he located the obituary for Mr. Ryuichi Nosay. The Yoshidas were highly regarded for their medical practice and for the research they did. I still find it hard to believe that I was a regular guest in their home, enjoying Mrs. Yoshida's delicious dinners while we laughed for hours around the kotatsu.

Finally, I must apologize for the language that peppers my manuscript after I documented the insanity that took Mr. Nosay's life. It just seemed to be natural in describing that diplomat.

My first published book has been an answer to prayers. I appreciate the kind staff of Christian Faith Publishing for walking me through each step. And I pray we may publish other manuscripts so I can keep learning and writing as it has always been my absolute joy.

Introduction

We have to go back a good long way to recognize how chance played a part in much of my life. It was chance that brought my parents together. My mother was engaged to a young soldier already sent to military training. It was chance that my father was visiting someone in Cullman County, and it was chance that brought my father and his friend walking down a mountain road where my mother lived with her father and his second family. He was tall and good looking. She had a lot of red hair. They both had unhappy childhoods, so from that day until April 1942, a lot of other chances actually got them together at the courthouse in Cullman, Alabama, to get married.

And it was probably by chance that Dad was undergoing military training when Mother was sent to stay with her father's second family just a few days before I was born in February 1943, and until he returned from the front lines of WWII, we lived with my beloved grandfather, first in Eva, Alabama, and then on Judge Long's estate in Austinville, Alabama.

Throughout my entire lifetime, I considered it was my very good fortune to have been born and raised near Granddad in north Alabama. He was a pillar of his community even though he owned little of earthly value, but he was a very conservative Christian who recognized others' needs and provided what he could, which was often what they needed. He never tolerated any hateful or mean behavior in his presence. All he had to do was glance sternly at the children to calm the atmosphere. And decades after his passing, he was still remembered with great respect by families in communities all around north Alabama.

Life was good and proper during the five years I lived near Granddad. But after the war, jobs were scarce in that region, and my father wanted to find a good job. Eventually we moved to Waukegan, Illinois, where he found a factory job, like so many other young men following the war. And suddenly, for the first time, I was far away from my gentle Granddad and his peaceful home, which, although not terribly roomy, had plenty of room for everybody and lots of space to run and play and enjoy nature. For much of the first year in Waukegan, my family was living in a crowded travel trailer. It was like being incarcerated without cause. I never got over that feeling of being controlled and no longer being allowed to get close to nature.

Even as a very young child, I was quiet and alert. I didn't argue with adults or children as I was the one who tried to avoid any disagreements throughout my life. And yet at some point in my childhood I realized that although my parents were both talented and hardworking, they were not compatible like married couples on television. I did my best to shelter my younger sisters from the anger, but I could not escape the physical blows and the hateful words they aimed at me. And similar punishment was felt from their other relatives as well. To be honest, when I was away from my beloved grandfather, I had no protection.

However, I was always grateful for my good fortune to begin my life in Granddad's home with his moral standards and Christian education. I was blessed every day I was with him. I followed him whenever I could, to the field and to the garden. I watched him select the best vegetables or watermelon for the table. I wanted to be of service to him, so I helped gather the potatoes and peanuts he uncovered. I fed the chickens. I listened as he explained the beauty of farming and how it allowed him to provide for his family.

Until my father returned from Europe, I was an only child. But I always considered myself just like one of Granddad's young children. And many evenings I tagged along with him to watch his evening chores at the barn. The first few times he introduced me to his stock, I blushed. But I smiled shyly, fearing I might risk disfavor for not acknowledging the introduction. I learned to put the dried corn into the grinder to remove the kernels, which we fed to his stock. I loved to hear him talk to his mule and his milk cow, and I learned so much about caring for those animals, the garden, the fruit trees, and the grapevines. I considered my granddad and his two sons my family as their life on that small farm was the life that I always wanted to live. My second choice would have been to live in a quiet library.

Part I

How It All Got Started

For decades, I have wanted to write this book. Indeed I needed to write this book even though I knew if I wrote it too soon, I might get seriously reprimanded by the government I had worked for with such pride. And too, I doubted my experiences with the federal government might be of interest to others. But it was the overkill of the #MeToo movement that finally sent me to the keyboard. I always understood the need to expose and punish sexual predators and abusers. But I knew that I had lived through some extraordinary events that could probably fill a volume­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ of those #MeToo crimes and misdemeanors. Fortunately, I was never sexually abused, but my painful experiences in this book are all true.

What I knew and endured was still on the front of my memory, and once I sat down to the keyboard, those facts appeared on paper so fast I couldn't believe I had gotten through the entire first draft of the book in about four months. Readers must understand this unique story is nearly a complete biography of those years of my life, mainly because of the events I will cover in this manuscript.

With luck, the reader will also come to learn the meaning of diplomat. It is true that most of those highly paid men and women begin as politicians while others are rewarded with that title for having donated a fortune to someone's political campaign. A prime example is the head of a Massachusetts's family whose financial support helped put FDR into the White House in exchange for an appointment to the Court of Saint James. By then, that man was being dressed to impress by others who knew what costume each occasion called for. Not widely known at that time, he was also a successful criminal who needed a very classy assignment to gloss over his mafia history in favor of political futures for his offspring.

To be sure, there are many chosen for the esteemed title who have done little except be born into a wealthy family. Likewise, many definitely meet the accepted identification for the president's personal envoy to a foreign government after decades of critical service; but there are many who exhibit a very stark difference, as they are consumed by an overriding ambition to the detriment of all else. And yet entirely too many of them have managed to advance all the way to the rank of ambassador, extraordinary, and plenipotentiary to be addressed as the honorable. But please read this book, and I doubt you would still be impressed with that title.

This is not the first nonfiction book I have authored. I wrote another after my father was brutally murdered in Georgia. With so many relatives from far and wide at the funeral, putting in their two cents' worth and arguing even in public, my hope to keep peace failed. I accepted the standard disagreements, which I could not escape; then, I walked away and finalized all the arrangements myself. That was always my method of operation, to accept the responsibility and pay for all services when necessary.

It was at that low point of utter disappointment and misery when I saw the benefit of researching and examining our ancestry over the last hundred years or so, hoping to better understand my family troubles. The more research I did, such as visiting and interviewing, or rather talking endlessly with older relatives, the easier it was to recognize the difficulty some of my relatives had in accomplishing all they could have, including happiness.

In that book, The Family Tree: From the Roots to the DNA, I described what a hard life my mother had in her childhood. I also explained how evil kinfolk damaged my father in his early days. After working on the book for a number of years, I was pleased that I got so many mysteries solved and finally understood what caused my family to qualify as a poster for dysfunction. Explaining truthfully and fairly everything my family had gone through actually helped me as well. But I was still the peacemaker.

In my childhood, we moved a number of times for different reasons. After we relocated to northern Illinois, we finally moved into a house of our own. The new house had been built on land that was once part of a large farm. Few other houses were close to us, but we knew the families who lived in them. When I started school, I was painfully shy. Being a redhead with freckles, I got teased a lot, which did nothing to improve my shyness. And for a while I also got teased due to my speech. However, that was very helpful because I was determined to improve, so I listened carefully to everything others said and took care to improve my pronunciation and inflection. Within a year, nobody would remember my former speech or accent.

I was still shy and seldom spoke to anybody except a few friends I went to school with those four years. They were nice friends, and we rode the school bus together. I was never allowed to leave the house and yard, so both of them met at my house to play in nice weather. But when I was nine, my family home life was shattered and my comfortable life was over. It hurt down to my soul to abandon everything I loved. Months later, my father was repentant and found us in Georgia. We moved to Michigan, once again with everything we owned in the trunk of our car.

Michigan treated me right. And almost at once, I was recognized for my academic work. Unfortunately, the teacher in that one-room schoolhouse announced to the entire school that in her forty-eight years of teaching, she had never had any student score as high as I did on the state's standardized IQ tests. I slid down in my seat. I had no idea what that meant, and as soon as school ended, I ran all the way home, hoping nobody had seen me blushing. It would be years before I got used to being told of similar test results. But I had no idea if I had a high IQ or if I was just gifted with aptitude and the ability to solve problems on paper.

I was fortunate with the education I got in Illinois before liberalism took over public schools. But as I said, when we moved to Michigan, I really hit my stride, perhaps because I was older. I was recognized for my test scores for the first time. I was still shy, but in high school, I found a comfortable niche, first in a rural school where I excelled in Latin and English. Then, moving yet again, I found happiness in a larger school with journalism and more Latin. Since I was one of the top students in all my classes, it was that school where I expected to graduate.

However, by the middle of my junior year, following my parents' long overdue divorce, my mother would not consider any other option but to leave Michigan and return to her roots in Alabama. I had lived in Michigan for seven years and had an excellent academic standing. I tried to explain to Mother that leaving Michigan meant abandoning my almost certain scholarship in journalism or English, but no one was concerned about me and my future, in particular my mother. I had to recognize and accept that my mother always tried to sabotage my success, my accomplishments, and my happiness. But it was still my duty as the peacemaker, so that June we went back to Alabama, with everything we could carry in the trunk of a small car and a pickup truck. For a second time, I lost everything I loved.

My mother had expected to be a lot happier, but that wasn't going to happen because she wouldn't be seeing her father as much as she had intended. However, she seemed somewhat content back in the state where she grew up.

I was the true victim of that first year in Alabama. Over the course of my life, I had not spent any happy time in Alabama unless I was with my Granddad. He was a saint in my eyes and many other eyes as well. He worked hard and helped everybody. A true Christian, he was dedicated to serving his church and its membership. When I was with Granddad, I was never verbally abused or threatened by a raging parent, nor would I be mistreated and whipped by my parents' other relatives. But that year after the four of us returned from Michigan, we were stuck in the middle of a rural community without transportation in a little house without plumbing of any kind. We had very little money and lived almost ten miles from Granddad's home.

For the second time, we had abandoned our large home in Michigan with nice appliances, antique furniture, a TV, and my precious boxes of books and school papers. It was not the first time my parents had caused us to lose our home and furnishings, and I slipped into a quiet depression again. As usual, my mother, who had suffered with a bad back all her life, left it to me to haul in pails of water daily from the well in the backyard. I carried water into the small house for every purpose. On Saturdays, I washed clothes in an old wringer machine and hung clothes on the line to dry. I took over all the chores since I could not count on my younger sisters to do even small tasks without starting a noisy argument. I was never able to tolerate anger and ugly behavior, and the two little girls had never been properly disciplined. As it usually happened, the youngest sister was not interested in doing anything around the house, and the middle sister was always looking for a fight if she were asked to help with anything. My mother was useless.

Furthermore, my final year of school was miserable as I was not befriended by any of the students at the high school, probably because I was a Yankee. And to be fair, I didn't try to know anyone because they would probably ask who I was related to, and I certainly didn't want to be connected to the only partial kin in that school, a girl two years younger than me who had a very bad reputation and was pregnant before she turned sixteen. And because I had not been able to finish school by attending my senior year in Michigan, I was ineligible for the journalism scholarship that I was sure I had earned to attend the University of Michigan. In Alabama, there had been no offer to help me get into college. I was the only senior who was on the A Honor Roll both semesters, but I was invisible.

I wanted an education, but I needed a job

Toward the end of the school year, I was summoned to the principal's office to take a call from the editor of the small-town weekly newspaper, The Hartselle Enquirer. The editor had seen a collection of my high school papers from Michigan. The copies had been sent by a relative who got them from my mother. It was the same school paper published when I was editor and where I had written and produced the entire newspaper alone because during my junior year, the school paper had been turned into an extracurricular activity without any school credit. Almost at once, the others showed no interest in working without getting credit. But I was ready for the challenge, and on the first day, it was obvious that the school paper would be left entirely up to me to get it written, printed and ready to sell. I did everything—except sell it.

When he called me at school, that small-town editor said he was impressed with my high school work and offered me a job. It was my first offer of any kind of job, and I was glad to get the $1 an hour. I had not considered how I could get to that job. But that wasn't going to last long.

The editor of the weekly The Hartselle Enquirer knew I wanted to find a way to get a college education. And he knew that I had been gifted a two-week trip to Cleveland to interview with some officials late that June. It was a phenomenal opportunity to meet a lot of important people who encouraged me and introduced me to college officials to work my way through school.

I returned to Alabama the second week in July, and before any other employee had arrived at work that first morning, that editor called me into his tiny office in the middle of that old building. I was full of enthusiasm as I felt I had found the way I could get an education working my way through school later that fall with sponsors in the Cleveland community. His expression did not change as he was not impressed.

He said he had expected me to work for him and become the feature editor, putting out a weekly column, which, to be fair, was composed of phone calls from local citizens who called with a list of all their activities that week, including shopping, going to church, hosting a birthday party, buying groceries, or visiting a friend in the hospital. It was local residents, many of whom just wanted their names in the paper. I started to explain that I had told him on the first phone call I wanted to get an education, but he interrupted. He told me he could only offer me another two weeks of work as he did not want anyone on his staff who slept with niggers. It was stunning to hear such slander from this man whose business prominently displayed large framed documents on the walls lauding his work as a leading Christian businessman in that town and as a deacon with his church.

I had never dated in school, and the only date I had in Hartselle was going to the movies a single time with the associate editor at the paper who had asked me out several times before I finally agreed in order to see the movie The World of Susie Wong. I didn't hold hands or let him kiss me good night as I was very shy and felt that was improper. But when we returned, I invited him into our humble home to meet my family. I had never been on dates in school in the four states where we had lived. And everybody who knew me in Hartselle knew I was not interested in dating as I was working toward an education. But I had never been able to defend myself against lies and certainly not against such hateful slander as in Hartselle, Alabama.

I walked out of that dirty little place, unable to understand such vulgar, selfish behavior. I had no money. And I was without that job I had held for about six weeks, a job that had allowed me to take home $32 a week to pay utilities and feed four people. I had no means of transportation. The small house where we had lived since moving to Alabama had no plumbing. So there I was, a teenager without a means of support. My mother had undergone extensive back surgery early that June and would be in a body cast for six to eight months, remaining in a nursing home for proper care. My two younger sisters would still need help. I had no choice. We had to move to Decatur and stay with my cousin and her husband until I could get a job, but I did not expect that to take too long.

The day after I got there, my cousin drove me to the employment office in Decatur to take the examination to get a decent job, or as I told my cousin that day, any job would do for a while. The young lady in the employment office who had graded the exams really became animated when she finished checking the scores of the group tested that morning. She said I had scored the highest grade ever made at that Alabama employment office, and she assured me that I would have a great job by the next morning. Of course I had assumed the best students would have been accepted at colleges and wouldn't even need a job in Decatur, Alabama. So when she gave me her card and asked me to call her at that number the next morning, assuring me she would have a good job for me, I promised I would call as I didn't care where I got a job.

I had to borrow the nickel for the call the next morning. I hurried to a corner gas station and dropped that precious coin in the slot. When the young lady answered and heard my voice, she suddenly spoke in a very low and sad tone, saying she was sorry, but they had nothing they could offer me. I heard exactly what her self-conscious voice was being forced to say, and even though I called the employment office many times and the same lady always answered, her voice always dropped, and she apologized to me that they had nothing to offer me.

I began to feel sorry for her because she was obviously embarrassed to be treating me this way after the enthusiasm she exhibited right after I had taken that test. I needed work of any kind to help support my family, but it was obvious I was being blacklisted by Jack Hoffhaus, that outstanding Christian at The Hartselle Enquirer. Yes, that hypocrite intended to make me pay for wanting to get into college and not staying with his rural weekly for a dollar an hour as he apparently expected me to add sparkle to the weekly copy, knowing that would probably increase his circulation and fulfill his financial expectations.

I knew what was going on, and I realized I should have gone to see an attorney to sue that city and Hoffhaus. But I didn't have an excess cent, and there was no one on my side. Perhaps the lawyers in Decatur, Alabama, knew Hoffhaus and would believe him over me.

Christianity is not a business. I knew that because my personal knowledge of Christianity was learned early in my beloved Granddad's home. I never had any doubt what a Christian was. A true Christian never had to identify himself as such because his actions would identify him to others. And any true Christian would have been eager to help a teenager burdened by responsibilities and needing a job to support her family. Jack Hoffhaus should have known I wanted the education so I could do a better job in newspaper work, and it is important to note that his feature writer would not retire for several more years anyway. But thanks to his evil nature, and I write about many details of his true nature in my book The Family Tree, I could not escape his cruelty in Alabama.

So I was unable to find a job. The cousin we were staying with was my age but had gotten married at sixteen. However, she was mainly interested in bowling and playing softball, so I picked up the slack, keeping house and caring for the very young baby. Once again, I was washing clothes on a wringer machine every day and carrying heavy baskets of wet laundry down the steep metal steps at the back of the two-story building to hang them out to dry. I cleaned the house and cooked the meals. I got no help from my sisters who had always been considered the little girls.

Finally, I was reduced to ironing for the neighbors earning three or four dollars a day, which I gave to my cousin's husband. It was the middle of summer's brutal heat, and there was no air-conditioning. My sisters slept on the bed in the second bedroom with a window, but I slept in the front room on the rock-hard horsehair sofa that had belonged to my mother's mother decades earlier, and due to my allergies, it irritated my skin through the thin sheet.

I continued to call the employment office once or twice a week, but I was getting no closer to a job. So it felt like a miracle when in the middle of August, my mother's brother came by my cousin's house. My family had last seen him the previous summer when he and his new wife visited on their honeymoon. As far as we knew, he was still living and working in Washington, DC, but that day, he said he had been working on a special assignment in south Alabama for much of that year. He often bragged about his important work, which impressed everyone within earshot. On his way back through north Alabama, he had heard about my needing a job, and he remembered that he and his new wife had promised me a trip to DC to get a government job.

Even though I didn't remember such a promise, I was thrilled that after a ridiculous summer of pain and torment, I was going to Washington, DC. I packed a few of my high school clothes that I had with me and visited Mother in the nursing home. When her brother was out of the room or talking to someone else, she kept pulling me down and demanding in my ear that I not go with him. But she had no idea what I had been going through, and I couldn't tell her. Years later, I finally saw through her true purpose of keeping me at home with her. But in 1961, I left with her brother Buddy on my way to Washington and a certain job!

That happy outlook lasted just a few hours north of the state line when I was viciously threatened that if I made a mistake and ever referred to that man as Uncle Buddy, he would make me pay. Studying his evil expression in the faint light from the dashboard, I remembered how cruel he had been to me when I was ten, and we had no place to live when my parents separated, and then when we came to Alabama, their mother died, and we hit bottom again. We were forced to go with Buddy to Georgia. It was the worst case of homelessness we ever experienced.

I would soon learn that even that wonderful offer of getting a job in Washington was under false pretenses, and that new situation would provoke more torment and fear. The difference was that the new threats were at the hands of a relative, my mother's brother Bud, or more correctly her half-brother. Within a week, I would learn where he had actually been the previous year. It flooded me with shame that he and my mother shared a mother.

But I always knew he was not my Granddad's son.

Alma Jean Payne, who, as a young widow with a child to raise, had stood on concrete floors for over fifteen years at Safeway Grocery in Washington, DC, to make a living. Not until her only son graduated and got a good job did she begin to date. That beautiful lady had fallen for Bud's style and flash. He always made big money and drove a nice car, and finally, she accepted his beautiful marriage proposal. But that night in Washington, DC, when she saw me standing at the end of her checkout line, smiling at her at the close of her day, her face registered nothing but fatigue. I was confused.

It wouldn't be long before I realized that highly principled lady who had endured so much and so many disappointments in her life had been deceived by Bud a year earlier, and that night when she saw me in her line at Safeway, she soon figured out that my presence was another of Bud's tricks. But that dear lady must have felt she had no choice but to take me in. Of course, in that situation, Bud also had to be part of her rescue.

As soon as she could, Jean threw Bud out again. He was furious and caused me great fear and worry with his threats to kill me. Again, it was Jean who protected me. Thanks to that amazing lady who had married my mother's brother Bud entirely by fraud, I was rescued and protected. I wish I had a woman in my family who had such a firm determination to protect younger women.

Jean and I became very close. She would explain what had happened after their honeymoon, which hurt me just hearing it. Out of respect, I called that beautiful lady Aunt Jean. She had been fooled by his charm and braggadocio for months before and during their honeymoon the previous summer. But when they got back to DC, she discovered just how treacherous her new husband was and divorced him at once.

It took some effort for us to get rid of Bud, but I was finally ready to look for a job. Jean's only son, Jack, drove me to the employment office to take the civil service exam. Within a few days, I had a letter from civil service instructing me to take the enclosed punch card to any government agency when I applied for a job.

I had passed that test and could apply for a real job. I was thrilled.

The next day was Friday, and when Jack asked me where I wanted to go, I only had one destination in mind.

I dream high, Jack. I might not get hired, but I want to go to the Department of State.

Jack found a parking place and waited in the car as I nervously walked up to the Diplomatic Entrance. I pushed through the revolving glass door and took it all in. No wonder it was called the Diplomatic Entrance. I started to look at others walking by who were dressed in such fine clothes and shoes. I even considered turning back before anybody noticed my old cotton dress, my plastic summer sandals, and Jean's purse that I was carrying.

But I was too close to give up.

I found an elevator and the directory board close by, which listed the employment office. I rode up that elevator, wondering what to expect. When I got to the fourth floor, I saw that all the long halls were painted a creamy beige. The lady in that office was wonderful. She looked at the punch card and congratulated me on my high score. I asked how she could tell, and she pointed to all those holes, explaining there was a code. Then she smiled and asked if I could start on Monday. What beautiful words. Evidently, she had not been put off by my costume.

I was hired by the Department of State!

I was out of danger from the perverted Jack Hoffhaus. I knew that dirty-minded and thoroughly evil man who professed to be a Christian in Hartselle, Alabama, could not work his sadistic, black-hearted tricks to keep me from this employment. I was out of Alabama and away from his phony Christianity. And all the depression and painful experiences of my fist month in DC at the hands of my mother's half-brother, Buddy, were at last behind me.

Even though I was told my civil service test score was high and qualified me for a higher entrance grade level, it was not a big salary. But I didn't care. The only disappointment was I felt I needed to continue helping support my family back in Alabama, so once again, I could not entertain dreams of a college education.

Now, at this point, let me skip ahead to my first real job at the Department of State. I reported for duty on September 11, 1961. I would go through some orientation. Then I would be working in State Department's large clerical pool until my security clearance had been partially completed. The first day there, I was directed to the only desk of normal size, which was located close to the supervisor's desk. There were a lot of other young women who were sitting in rows of small typist's desks in the other section of the big room. Evidently, they were high school graduates, most from Pennsylvania, who were there also waiting for their security clearances. Apparently, they had not managed to get to college either, but they had all been there before I arrived. I couldn't see what kind of work they were doing as there was little movement and very little typing over that way.

I was given all special assignments as soon as the supervisor got them. The only task I did not enjoy was taking fingerprints for new hires. I was terribly shy, and they were almost all men. I felt uncomfortable holding their hands and rolling each inked finger onto the form. I wondered why one of the other women, who had been there months longer than I, had not gotten that assignment. It would become clear later when I found out once again my test score had been somewhat impressive, and apparently, State was interested in getting me to work as quickly as possible.

One Monday, shortly after I had gotten to that clerical pool, the supervisor walked over to my desk. She had no idea what I had been through in Alabama and at the hands of my mother's half-brother in DC before I finally managed to get a job. And I believe I was so happy to be working that I had been smiling all the time and ready to help with anything in that service pool. And that supervisor had apparently noticed my eagerness.

That morning, she asked if I knew what a girl Friday was. I just smiled and waited, as I had a good idea what was required, and it did not involve a deserted beach. She said she had a request from personnel that