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| Independence Day image by Watson Media, via Flickr.com |
During my 22 years as a Foreign Service Officer, how embassies observed July 4 changed, reflecting the change in security situations around the world.
American citizens overseas seemed to believe they should all be invited to these events, but that isn't the purpose of the funds used to pay for them. They are formal, official, and representational. Many embassies schedule a second, informal and unofficial event for Americans resident in the country to observe July 4.
My first July 4 overseas as a State Department employee was in Germany in 1986 where we celebrated at a reception in the afternoon at the Consul General's home. Most of the guests were Germans or representatives of other diplomatic missions in Stuttgart. All the staff of the embassy or consulate are on duty at these events; they are not entertainment for staff. They are work.
Two years later, in 1988, I was in Doha, Qatar, where we had planned the reception at a hotel on July 4, but then, the day before on July 3, the USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655 over the Gulf that has two names, on the Bandar Abbas-Dubai route. We spent July 3 calling everyone we had invited to let them know the event was being postponed until later in the year. Instead of observing Independence Day as our national day that year, we observed the date in September that was the anniversary of the signing of the Constitution.
The following year, 1989, we observed national day early, in June. Some countries in the Middle East held their national day receptions in February, around Presidents Day, when the weather on the Arabian Penninsula was mild enough for the receptions to be held outside. Temperatures in July were often well above 100 degrees, making an outdoor event dangerous as well as very uncomfortable. June was too late for an outdoor reception, so the reception was again in a hotel. The ambassador couldn't use the explanation that it was too hot to observe national day in July. I always thought the reason we held the event in June was that the ambassador knew he would be leaving Qatar before July 4. His term was ending on June 30.
In 1990, the U.S. Embassy in Barbados held its official reception on July 4 at the Ambassador's residence. The weekend before, the North American community resident in Barbados observed both Canada Day and July 4 at a hotel on the beach. That event turned out to be memorable for a very different reason. The owner of the hotel was an American who was under indictment for mail fraud. His arrest was scheduled for the following day, postponed because of our event. He had done his research and found there was no extradition treaty between the U.S. and Barbados, so he thought he was safe there. His research wasn't thorough enough, however, since an existant treaty between the U.S. and the U.K., signed before the U.K. granted Barbados its independence in 1966, applies between the U.S. and Barbados. The day after our beach party, a photo of the owner of the hotel, handcuffed, being escorted out of the hotel was on the front page of the newspaper.
In 1993 and 1994, when we were in Moldova, the number of resident Americans was limited to just those of us at the embassy, the staff and the construction workers in the country to ugrade the buildings on the grounds of the embassy compound. We held official events for our Moldovan contacts and other diplomats. And, like in Stuttgart, we held a separate, informal, event for the staff and American workers. At one of those events, the ambassador posed for photos with some of the workers, sitting in the side car of the motorcycle one of them had bought to get around town. She was quite a lady.
July 4, 1996, we were back in Washington, D.C. We observed the fireworks on thr Mall that year from the 8th floor of the State Department building. We not only saw and heard the fireworks from that vantage point; we felt them.
We were in Abu Dhabi from 1996 to 1999. We arrived just after bombings of Khobar Towers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, and we lived through the aftermath of the east African bombings. July 4 observations seriously changed after those events. Even the informal, just for Americans residents in the country, events featured walk-through metal detectors at all entrances. Guards were posted everywhere. No one was allowed into the venue without presenting an invitation and identification to prove the invitation was theirs.
My final national day celebration overseas was in Sana'a where we observed the event in a very unorthodox way: we painted a school for children with disabilities. The ambassador had established this pattern previously. She felt that the several hundred dollars needed for food and drinks to be consumed in an evening would be better spent doing something to improve the lives of Yemenis. She received approval to spend the representational funds on paint, brushes, and other supplies and on the day, we staff members who would have had to work at a reception got our hands dirty doing a different type of work.
We didn't need walk-through metal detectors for that one.
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