Faith Ryan Whittlesey L’63 with President Ronald Reagan.
In support of Reagan’s anticommunist policy in Central America, she formed the White House Outreach Working Group on Central America and advocated the creation of the National Bipartisan Commission on Central America. Because of phone records between her and Col. North, she was investigated for involvement in the Iran–Contra scandal, in which the Reagan administration sold arms to Iran to fund the Contras, a rebel group seeking to overthrow the socialist government in Nicaragua. North was indicted in the scandal, although his conviction was later overturned, and Whittlesey was cleared of any involvement. “She was very clearly a devoted anticommunist, but she never got in front of the President,” North said, adding that she had a grasp of what would resonate
Swiss relations,” said Patricia Schramm, the current Foundation president. Schramm called her an extraordinary leader and diplomat who deftly applied everything she learned as an ambassador in her work. “She was very, very devoted,” Schramm said, “and very beloved by all the people who worked with her.” Her political and diplomatic efforts rarely waned. In 2001, President George W. Bush made her a member of the U.S. delegation to the U.N. Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in all its Aspects. The American Rose Society named an off-white rose after her in 2006, and in 2010, she received the International Friend of the Rose Award for fostering a relationship between gardening
with the American people, such as her demand for the declassification of a report on a massive stockpile of Soviet weapons retrieved after the liberation of Grenada. After concluding her second ambassadorship in Switzerland, Whittlesey served 19 years as president and chairwoman of the American Swiss Foundation. “She initiated the Young Leaders Conference in 1990 and led this organization for almost three decades and built it into what it is today, which is the most important private organization in United States/
communities in the U.S. and China. Whittlesey faced personal adversity. Her husband, Roger Whittlesey, took his own life in 1974, which left her a widow with three young children. Her oldest son, Henry, also committed suicide in 2012. Despite her sorrows, friends described her as charismatic. “Charm doesn’t cover it,” Cornelius said. “She left people feeling joyful.” Whittlesey is survived by her children William and Amy; 10 grandchildren; and a brother.
PHOTO: COU RTESY RON ALD RE AGA N LI BRA RY
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