Jefferson Caffery

Jefferson Caffery (December 1, 1886 – April 13, 1974) served as U.S. ambassador to El Salvador (1926-1928), Colombia (1928-1933), Cuba (1934-1937), Brazil (1937-1944), France (1944-1949), and Egypt (1949-1955).

Career

Caffery launched his career of international diplomacy in 1911 when he entered the Foreign Service as second secretary of the legation in Caracas in 1911 during the William Howard Taft administration.

He traveled to Iran (then named Persia) in 1916, to Paris after World War I with President Wilson’s peacemakers, then to Washington, D.C., to arrange details for visits by the King of Belgium and the Prince of Wales. In 1920, he was named second-in-command at the U.S. Embassy in Madrid. In 1933, Caffery briefly served as assistant secretary of state under Cordell Hull. Throughout his career he also had worked in lower-ranking diplomatic posts in Belgium, Germany, Greece, Japan, Persia, Sweden, and Venezuela.

In total, he worked 43 years in foreign service under five presidents, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower.

He was awarded the Foreign Service Cup in 1971 by his fellow Foreign Service officers. He held several honorary degrees and decorations, including the "Laetare" Medal from Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana, in 1954. He received the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor from the president of France in 1949 and the Order of the Cordon of the Republic from the president of Egypt in 1955.

Personal life

Caffery was born in Lafayette, Louisiana, to Charles Duval Caffery and the former Mary Catherine Parkerson. He was privately educated in primary and secondary school. He was a member of the first graduating class of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (then called the Southwestern Louisiana Industrial Institute). He also graduated with a bachelor's degree from Tulane University in New Orleans in 1906. He was admitted to the Louisiana bar in 1909.

According to one account, Caffery was bisexual. The source reports that in the 1930s William Wieland, a U.S. State Department official known in Cuba as Arturo Montenegro, was intimate with Caffery and his predecessor Sumner Welles. [cite web | url = http://www.amigospais-guaracabuya.org/oagoh001.php | title = Criminal Action Against a Once Friendly People and Nation | first = Oswaldo F. | last = Hernandez | year = 2005 | month = August | accessdate = 2007-08-18 ]

Caffery married the former Gertrude McCarthy of Evansville, Indiana, in 1937, while in Rio de Janeiro. They had no children. He retired with his wife in 1955 to reside in Rome, where he was the honorary private chamberlain to Popes Pius XII, Pope John XXIII, and Paul VI. He returned to Lafayette in 1973, shortly before Mrs. Caffery's death.

The Cafferys are buried behind St. John’s Cathedral in Lafayette. A portion of Louisiana Highway 3073 in Lafayette is named "Ambassador Caffery Parkway" in his memory.

References

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succession box
title = U.S. Minister to El Salvador
before = Montgomery Schuyler
after= Warren D. Robbins
years=20 July 1926–22 July 1928succession box
title = United States Minister to Colombia
before=Samuel H. Piles
after=Sheldon Whitehouse
years=28 November 1928–20 May 1933succession box
title=United States Ambassador to Cuba
before=Sumner Welles
after=J. Butler Wright
years=1934-1937succession box
title=United States Ambassador to Brazil
before=Hugh S. Gibson
after=Adolf A. Berle, Jr.
years=17 August 1937–17 September 1944succession box
title=United States Ambassador to France
before=William D. Leahy (to 1942)
after=David K. E. Bruce
years=1944-1949succession box
title=United States Ambassador to Egypt
before=Stanton Griffis
after=Henry A. Byroade
years=1949-1955
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