David Lyon

Chevy Chase, MD

Except for a severe case of writer's block while trying to write an Honors paper Junior year, I can honestly say I enjoyed just about every minute at Swarthmore. A great group of friends and classmates, of course, but also faculty members like Ray Hopkins who helped me set up an informal concentration in Latin American studies and Paul Beik who was so bothered by having 16 students sign up for his course on Russian History that he split the class in two. I think what I took with me into the Foreign Service was the awareness that two people can have profound intellectual differences without making it personal.

Summary for 50th reunion: I spent a total of 32 years in the Foreign Service, starting off in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1974 and retiring in 2005 as Ambassador to Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, the Kingdom of Tonga, and Tuvalu. Other overseas assignments included Brazil, Ghana, The Philippines, Thailand, China, and Australia.

I met my wife, Maureen, during my assignment to Recife, Brazil. An Army nurse during the Vietnam War, she was a Peace Corps Volunteer and staff member in Brazil. Our two children, Nathan and Jo, were born in Manila.

After moving to California in late 2005, I was a consultant specializing in international affairs, humanitarian assistance and political-military issues. My clients included the U.S. Army, the Marine Corps, U.S. Forces Korea, the Global Peacekeeping Operations Initiative in Mongolia, and the Department of State while teaching the occasional class at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS), the Naval Postgraduate School and the Defense Language Institute. I ramped down my consulting work between 2016-18 and began from 2008 until COVID I have been a part-time Army civilian employee. mentoring of MIIS students, mostly Americans thinking of foreign service and the school's large Chinese population.

Throughout, I have been enjoying the Monterey peninsula, especially outdoor activities like cycling and hiking, with bi-annual trips to Australia to see our kids. Having generally avoided first world postings during my career, Maureen and I are discovering Europe, with Mediterranean, Baltic and Danube cruises and training around Italy, along with Alaskan and Mississippi cruises.

Is hard to say what it didn't shape. What I learned in classes and informally from my professors and friends contributed to an enjoyable and successful career. The intellectual give & take in classes and out helped me understand that people could differ in their views without being opposed to me or my thinking. Being exposed to smart, outgoing and talented women -- coming as this did so early in the women's movement -- led to my seeing them as my equals in my career and personal life. I'm a better, smarter and hopefully more sensitive person due to Swarthmore.