Howard Hills

Howard accepted is law degree on stage at the Botanical Garden Pavilion in Balboa Park, San Diego

Howard and fellow Peace Corps Volunteers are take their oath of office on the primitive dock at Ponape before leaving by small trip ship to the even more remote island of Kosrae.

Arriving for a White House meeting

Working session in West Wing of White House.

A few laughs never hurt after the serious business is done.

Back on assignment out in the islands, but not as a Peace Corps Volunteer any more.

Stopover at Pearl Harbor, visiting with Admiral Crowe and his wife before briefing CINCPAC and his staff

Ambassador Zeder awards Defense Meritorious Service Medal for service in strategic treaty negotiations

At home with Ambassador Zeder before Vice President Bush, Secretary of Commerce Baldridge and Senator Simpson of Wyoming arrive for private dinner.

I was Bush's staff for private meeting with President and Governors from Federated States of Micronesia in Saipan (Bush inspects gift of handicrafts from Kapingamarangi Island).

Light moments before getting down to business:  Erhardt Aten, Governor of Truk Islands, Yosiwo George, Vice President of Federated States of Micronesia, Tosiwo Nakayama, FSM President.

Departure from Saipan after dancing into wee hours at Governor's house (Governor and his wife to my right, their grand daughter to my left.

President Reagan delivers speech on U.S. relations with Pacific islands at Guam, including a couple paragraphs I wrote that survived the White House speechwriters editing process!

President and First Lady greeted by Admiral Dale Hagen and his wife in their residence at Nimitz House in Guam, previously occupied by Admiral Chester Nimitz after Guam was liberated from Japanese occupation in WWII.  The Hagen's moved to an empty officer housing for the night so the Reagan's could sleep in the same room where President Nixon and First Lady Pat Nixon slept en route to Nixon's historic trip re-opening relations with China.

Ambassador Zeder and I dine at 400 year old Geisha House with Japanese Labor Minister Yamamura to my left, and to his left Japanese Foreign Minister Shintaro Abe.

Inside White House complex, November 9, 1988, arriving at Old Executive Office Bldg. from West Wing with Dr. Peter Watson late in the night as representatives of Vice President Bush at ceremony recognizing him  as President-Elect and taking custody of officials keys and security protocols to open and occupy the Office of the President-Elect of the United States, a federal agency that exists from the moment of certification as President-Elect until the moment the oath of office is taken on January 20.  Peter and I had been on Bush's Transition Team, working in the summer of 1988 after the national party conventions with the Transition Team designated by Governor Michael Dukakis, the Democratic Party candidate.  

Me, Peter and Didi Watson in the office of General Services Administration head Dick Austin for signature of official certification of election results designating Bush as President-Elect.

U.S. State Department delegation in Tiblisi, capital of former Soviet Union satellite state, Republic of Georgia, with President and former Soviet Union Foreign Minister Shevardnaze, U.S. Ambassador, me, Ambassador Zeder.  

In December of 1988 I was summoned to White House by Dr. Condolezza Rice who dispatched me and Ambassador Zeder to Solidarity World Headquarters in Gdansk, Poland to meet with Lech Walesa, who was at the time either going to lead Poland to freedom from domination by the Soviet Union or disappear into the Soviet penal system and never be heard from again.  We took the optimistic approach and negotiated agreements to bring U.S. investment into Poland as soon as it was not longer a communist client state of Moscow.

Meeting with Nicaragua's newly-elected President Violetta Chamorro in her Managua office weeks after she defeated Sandinista Communist Party President Daniel Ortega.

Meeting with President Endara of Panama in Presidential Palace,  I was appointed as head of a U.S. delegation that got a White House West Wing meeting and send off by President Bush before going to Panama City in the days following corrupt dictator Manuel Noriega was arrested and deposed in favor of Endara and Vice President Guillermo Ford, with whom I also met.  Ford had appeared on the cover of Time and Newsweek walking down the street with blood streaming down his face and a blood soaked shirt, after Noriega's thugs attacked and beat him with rebar.  After I told him we had met with Violetta Chamorro in Managua, in self-effacing jest Ford told me "The only thing that hurt worse than getting beat up was when Chamorro saw the photo on Newsweek and was quoted saying she felt sorry for 'that nice old man.'   I had never thought of myself as an old man, nice or not, but I guess I am!"

Treaty signing with Polish leaders in 1990 opening trade between the U.S. and Poland after collapse of communist regime.

Arriving back in Frankfurt on my way home to my family in Washington after signing trade and investment treaties with Russia in Moscow and capitals of 11 former Soviet Union satellite client states that became independent republics after collapse of Russian communist empire.

On tarmac in Budapest, Hungary after a flight to Borsod country in rural Hungary to inspect a steel mill, where we had landed on a remote unattended air strip built by the Soviet Union in the early Cold War.  The only other aircraft at the site of the old airstrip was an open cockpit biplane overgrown by vines.    

On floor of what would become Hungarian parliament waiting to meet with Prime Minister Jozef Antal to sign trade treaties under which the U.S. gave GE political risk insurance for a $150 million lightbulb factory in Hungary,  and to witness rehearsal for installation of first democratic government since Soviet Union crushed opposition and imposed communism in 1956.

Looking out across the Aral Sea en route to Dushanbe Tajikistan, on White House line patched through to home, practicing that week's spelling test words with my fourth grade daughter.

My wife, Lura, in Oval Office for small "family only" swearing in ceremony for our patron, Ambassador Zeder, as head of the State Department's overseas strategic investment agency.

Ambassador Zeder was a WWII fighter pilot, highly successful businessman, whose father was an industrial engineer and started a little motor car company with his partner Walter Chrysler.  Zeder served as Director of Territorial Affairs for President Ford, as President Reagan's Personal Representative for Micronesian Status Negotiations, then as head of the U.S. State Department's strategic overseas private investments agency under his close friend the first President Bush (41).   We worked to secure base rights in the Pacific for the Strategic Defense Initiative, and then saw the fruits of that program as the Soviet Union crumbled, the Cold War ended, super power disarmament and missile reductions became a reality.  As swords were beaten into plowshares we roamed the world for the State Department bringing private investments and jobs to the new democratic nations of the world.   It was a lot of things, including service to the cause of human freedom, but in addition it was a lot of fun doing important things.  He was a wonderfully inspired man who knew his own fallibilities better than anyone, and loved other people for their own inspiration and fallibility.  I learned from him how to encourage the former and forgive the latter, in myself and others.