The Diplomat, Linguist, and World Traveler: Patrick Truhn ’72

Alumni Office (A): Can you introduce yourself, your grad year, and where you are now?

Patrick Truhn (P): My name is Patrick Truhn. I was Breck Class of 1972, and I'm currently in Berlin, Germany.

A: What have you done and where have you been since graduating from Breck?

P: I've been all over the world. I left the Twin Cities shortly after graduating from Breck, and I studied first at Brown University, where I received my bachelor's degree, and then at Columbia, where I did two master's degrees. I had already done internships during my student years in Paris thanks to a program that was run out of an office there for Ivy League undergraduates. I then moved to Paris in the fall of 1979 as the Deputy Library Director at the American University. I spent five years in that position and took the foreign service exam because I was interested in staying overseas but in a more public service-oriented profession that would provide a wider range of experiences. I was hired in 1984 by the State Department, spent almost a year in Washington for various kinds of training, and then over the next 30 years served in South Korea, Italy (twice), Morocco, Bulgaria, the former East Germany, Indonesia, Australia, and France. I ended my career where it began, in Paris, and retired in the fall of 2013. I had already bought an apartment in Berlin. It was a short move from Paris, and the rest is history.

A: Can you tell us about your experience with diplomacy and foreign policy and what advice you would give Breck students who might be looking at going into your field of work?

P: I think the most important ingredients for someone looking to go into a diplomatic career are adaptability, patience, and flexibility. It's also important to be interested in cross-cultural activities and getting to know people from other cultures and backgrounds. It's very good to have an analytical mind so that you can provide insight on what's going on in another country. Being articulate in oral and written communication is also important, because you have a great deal of report writing and public speaking, but I think these core competencies are most crucial to success in a diplomatic career. 

A: You speak four languages fluently and another four with working proficiency. Where did your love of languages start? 

P: I started my schooling in an experimental school in St. Paul called the Cornelia Latin Grammar School, which was run by a woman who had won a court case to homeschool her son — something that was nearly unheard of in 1960 — because she found the quality of education in the public schools substandard. She opened the school on the premise that there were other parents who would embrace her vision of education. Part of this pedagogic vision involved language, so the school decided to offer foreign language instruction: French and German beginning in kindergarten, Latin added in first grade, and ancient Greek from the second grade. 

This whole experiment in education lasted four years, through my third-grade year. When the school suddenly announced it was going to close, it was August 1, 1964. My poor parents, who had no inkling that this was going to come, and certainly after four years of the Cornelia Latin Grammar School had no intention of sending me to public school, had to find an alternative, and quickly. They started calling all over and were told repeatedly that the application deadline was long past and all classes were full. Breck was the only private school that was even willing to talk to them. I was invited to be tested, and the school was very impressed with what I had learned and my test scores. So Breck said, “Okay look, we're not going to put your son in the eighth grade at age eight, but we think advancing one year would be doable, and in that case he can at least continue his French.” So, I have spoken French continuously from the age of five. I had to wait until the ninth grade to get back to German, but, thanks to Breck’s self-paced German program, I was able to advance quite quickly. I had a very intensive German brushup course at the State Department prior to my assignment as Consul General in Leipzig, and now speak German exclusively with my husband. He grew up in the former East Germany and had English courses, but his teachers never expected him to actually use the language with a native speaker.

I later learned psycholinguists have determined that if a child is exposed to a language other than his or her own prior to the point of understanding their native language as a native language, then the child has for the rest of his or her life a predisposition to learning languages easily. That has certainly been my experience. Some languages, like Italian and Spanish, I essentially picked up on my own, while for others I had formal instruction. When you come into the State Department, they give you what's called the Modern Language Aptitude Test, which determines how likely you are to be able to learn a so-called super hard language. I was fortunate to fall into this group and was sent to intensive Korean language training for six months. As a result, I was able to do my job without an interpreter in Seoul.

A: As you think about your career, are there any standout moments or major accomplishments?

P: There are people in the Foreign Service who are the equivalent of tornado chasers, who have to be where the next war is about to break out. I was not one of those people, but all the same found myself in some pretty remarkable places at the right time. I was in the Arab world for the Gulf War. Morocco was about as safe as you could be, but we had a very restrictive security posture that we had to observe. I had to evacuate all of the American family members and a third of the American staff within less than a week. That was a pretty momentous occasion.

I was in Eastern Europe twice, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, first in Bulgaria, which was the last of the Eastern European countries to shake off communism, and then in the former East Germany. I arrived in Sofia just a year after the transition, and one of my huge challenges was to restructure the way the embassy operated and to explain to our often bewildered staff what was going on and why. Under communism, the embassy had been required by the host government to hire all of its local staff and lease all of its apartments for the American staff through the Foreign Ministry, which would vet our future employees and require them to report on what was going on inside the embassy. One of the first and most momentous decisions I had to make was to sever that relationship from the Foreign Ministry, establish a formal employer-employee relationship with our staff, and explore the nascent private real estate market. When we announced this change, I expected a certain amount of pushback, but I didn't expect the questions like “Who is going to intercede between us and our government?” I replied, “Welcome to democracy, if you don't like your government, vote them out!” 

The local currency was in freefall, so we were doing wage surveys and increasing salaries constantly. But we never just put out a notice with the increase; we held a town hall meeting, which I thought was really helpful. Frequently the questions had nothing to do with wages but rather focused on political and social expectations. I had to do a lot of thinking on my feet, but we had a very thankful and appreciative workforce because of that. 

 

The people in Washington pegged me to do the legwork to open an embassy in Skopje, the capital of what is now called North Macedonia. I would travel one week a month and would basically have to do an entire month's work in that time — in a country that we still had not recognized as independent from Yugoslavia. Yet, I was welcomed with open arms at the Foreign Ministry. I had just arrived in Jakarta when the Bali bombing took place. I was also there for the bombing at the Marriott hotel and at the Australian Embassy. I went from a period of total shock, where no one was expecting this kind of terrorist activity to a period in which we learned to live with terrorism. I always had a bag packed in my bedroom with my passport, my important documents, the deed to my apartment in Washington, and anything that I knew I would have to have if I had literally five minutes notice to leave, but we didn't let that destroy our lives. And I think that's a really important lesson to learn because many of my colleagues found it very difficult. 

A: What are some core memories or lessons you learned at Breck that have stayed with you until now?

P: I think the most important one is self-motivation. I'm a child of the 60s, and we wanted to do our own thing, and Breck let you. There was a structure, and there were scads of really smart, qualified, friendly people to help you, but Breck prodded you to find out what you wanted to do and helped make it happen and in the process prepared you for lifelong learning. 

During my career, I was repeatedly asked to give speeches to high school graduation classes, and I often said, “Most of you are going to end up in professions that don't even exist today. There's no kind of easy template for how you should be preparing yourself; you've got to be prepared for massive change. You've got to be prepared for career changes halfway through your adult life, or maybe even multiple times. And you've got to have the adaptability, the flexibility to figure it out.” I think way before this was recognized as something of the utmost utility and necessity, Breck figured it out and offered the atmosphere, the structure, and the vision to let people figure a lot of this out for themselves and take responsibility. 

A: What does a perfect night out in Berlin look like for you and your husband, Michael?

P: Because we have so many common interests, we have done what Germans in our age group do, which is become members of several “friends” groups. We are members of the friends of all three Berlin opera companies, of several museums, of several music festivals, and of the Prussian palaces and gardens. All of these organizations either have free or minimally-priced events out the wazoo. One night we're going through part of some palace built in the 18th century that's normally off-limits to visitors and being guided by the curator, and the next night we're at the opera. We go to lectures, and we go to art exhibitions. My husband spends his entire summer in the garden; that's his getaway. Michael and I travel probably once a month, and I'm the one who usually plans our trips, having had responsibility for planning several trips abroad for US presidents. Our last big trip was to Japan — my fifth trip, his first — right after Easter. 

A: Thank you so much for your time, Patrick!

You can find Patrick in Berlin, in the Garden with his husband Michael, or traveling the world en route to another adventure.