America loses a decorated diplomat

Not many knew he was even living here in this valley, but the country lost a great American diplomat April 6.

Marshall Brement lost a long battle with cancer after his health forced him to move near hospitals in Tucson from his home in the Tubac Golf Resort, where he arrived in 2003 to settle, like many who come here, into a quiet existence so he could pursue yet another artistic passion in what was left of his storied life.

His novel, Day of the Dead, was his last great love, other than Pamela, his wife of nearly 36 years. It’s an insider’s view of the American Foreign Service role in carrying out a coup and assassination in early sixties Saigon.

Brement took his research directly from experience, since he served in Saigon then, only one of the many prestigious government service positions he held in Asia, Indonesia, Europe, and the United States over the years.

President Reagan appointed him as ambassador to Iceland in 1981, a critical job then, since Iceland held strategic importance during the Cold War, militarily because our Soviet submarine tracking force operated there, and geopolitically when one considers the number of local Communist sympathizers in power in Iceland at the time.

Brement had also served as ambassador to the United Nations, was an expert on the Soviet Union after two tours of duty in Moscow (1964-66 and 1974-76), was put in charge of Soviet affairs for the White House National Security Staff from 1977-80, and is credited with bridging cultural and political chasms and changing the general attitude of Icelanders at a critical point in the Cold War in favor of the United States, eventually convincing leaders to permit F-15 fighter jets and AWAC’s at American bases there.

Revered by the people of that tiny Scandinavian country because he was interested in them for more than their political importance, he was honored for two books of translations of Icelandic poetry he wrote.

He taught military strategy all over the world, including four years for the Chief of U.S. Naval Operations, and five years as Associate Director of the George C. Marshall Center in Germany, where he instructed many former Communists, as well as other military and civilian leaders from 40 different Warsaw Pact countries, in post-Cold War democratic principles.

A trusted American patriot, he served under nine different presidents, garnering awards like the U.S. Navy Distinguished Public Service Medal, and the Distinguished Civilian Service Award from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

He was in the process of writing his memoirs when he died.

When he retired it was a sort of homecoming for his wife to return to the valley where her parents Margo and Bud Ewing owned the Z Triangle cattle ranch near Elgin for 50 years.

“I always remembered Tubac as a charming community,” she said, recalling that she wanted to move closer to her mom in Green Valley who used to play golf at the resort, and thought Marshall would like the peaceful surroundings for his writing, too, plus his sons, graduates of U of A, still live in Tucson.

Pamela Brement was actually born and raised in the Philippines, but spent summer vacations here as a bona fide wrangler on the ranch, picking up work as an extra, stunt girl, and sometimes stand-in for Shirley Jones on the movie set of Oklahoma when it was being filmed in the San Raphael site near Patagonia in the ‘50s.

A published fiction and non-fiction writer and playwright, she spent two years in Vietnam and Laos in the ’60s covering combat areas as a journalist for Time magazine.

Both their connections to the nation’s capital, Pamela’s journalism work and his foreign service, brought them together, and she continues to stay connected there, since Theatre J in D.C. just picked up one of her plays.

Marshall Brement always maintained a firm belief that we should exercise diplomatic options with mutual respect for other nations to solve global problems.

“We are more unpopular with the rest of the world than we have ever been,” he once said, noting what he called the previous administration’s poor foreign policy moves, lost middle east allies and military blunders in Iraq, and their philosophy of unilateralism.

If we provoke other nations with arrogance, he said, it only breeds contempt toward us around the world.

It was the end of a long and fruitful journey for an Air Force officer, college professor, military strategist, diplomat, author, and a man who may be as responsible as anyone else who lived as an American for decisions that have affected the existence of everyone on the planet.