Word: peurifoys
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They stood and watched the police parachute-drop demonstration, U.S. Ambassador John E. Peurifoy and his two sons, Clinton, 14, and Daniel, 9. Then handsome Jack Peurifoy and the boys got into his robin's-egg-blue Ford Thunderbird and headed back to the Thai beach resort of Hua Hin, 85 miles southwest of Bangkok, for lunch. It was a holiday outing, a lark for the boys, and just the occasion for Peurifoy to open up with his prized Thunderbird. He gunned it up to 70 m.p.h. and left his four-jeep police escort behind. They were used...
...dangers of the road across Hua Hin's green rice lands is a series of one-lane bridges across irrigation canals. Sweeping down toward one of the bridges, Peurifoy saw a truck approaching from the other side. He had two choices-to speed up and try to slip through ahead of the truck, or to brake hard and hope the truck would, too. Peurifoy hit the brakes -too late. The Thunderbird smashed head-on into the truck. The ambassador and his younger son were killed almost instantly; the other boy was badly injured...
Open-Shirt Diplomacy. Peurifoy died as he lived-audaciously, dramatically, at high speed. Though anything but an orthodox diplomat. Jack Peurifoy had performed outstandingly in difficult assignments-Greece, Guatemala, Thailand. He was essentially a political operator-jaunty, backslapping, forever doing favors, confidential with correspondents, quick at sizing up the practicalities of a situation, ever willing to take the apparently radical course from which the highly trained, career-conscious professionals are likely to hang back. Said Peurifoy once: "The State Department was ripe for guys like...
...South Carolina prosecuting attorney, Peurifoy was neither rich nor Ivy League. He had to resign from West Point in his second year, after his father's death. Starting out in Washington as a $90-a-month elevator operator in the House of Representatives, he soon got a job as a clerk in State and rose rapidly. Catching George Marshall's eye, he was made Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Administration, the department's No. 3 job. He was personally popular on the Hill when the State Department was not. He was good at getting appropriations...
Joining the career foreign service at the top in 1950, Peurifoy soon showed that he was a diplomat of a different sort. He preferred open shirts and slacks to striped pants, driving his fast cars to riding in limousines, and man-to-man talk to courtly ambiguities. In Athens, as U.S. ambassador, he started out by telling Premier Sophocles Venizelos: "Look, Soph, you call me Jack. Let's talk frankly about all this." Within two years, by his direct methods, he had helped to install a strong, anti-Communist government and to raise U.S. prestige...