Packed in 2023: Our favorite new additions to our collection

As 2023 draws to a close, the National Museum of American Diplomacy is looking back on a successful year in building the museum’s collections. Here are some highlights from the more than 100 total articles we collected.

1st U.S. commemorative First Day Cover stamp featuring Ambassador Frances E. Willis

In 2006, the US Postal Service (USPS) released its “Distinguished American Diplomats” series of stamps. They honored six diplomats: Hiram Bingham IV, Charles E. Bohlen, Philip C. Habib, Robert D. Murphy, Clifton R. Wharton Sr. and Frances E. Willis.

Frances Willis was the first woman to enter the Foreign Service and rose through the ranks of the Foreign Service to become an ambassador. She was also the first woman to achieve the highest diplomatic rank, a career ambassador, serving as ambassador to three countries: Switzerland, Norway and Sri Lanka.

This is a stamp affixed to a commemorative envelope and postmarked on the day of release. It is known to collectors as the “First Day Cover” or “First Day Cover.”

Gift of Nicholas J. Willis

2. Diplomatic ID cards for William Dougherty and Jane Simons Dougherty

World War II and its aftermath were a time of significant change in the world of diplomacy and international relations. For the United States, the postwar world created a need for more diplomats to help establish and maintain relationships with countries and new international organizations such as the United Nations.

William Dougherty and Jane Simons were two Americans who joined the State Department and served abroad in difficult places. Dougherty was recruited by the US Army Signal Corps in 1945, where he worked as a cryptologist.

During his stay in Warsaw he met Jane Simons, another embassy employee. The two fell in love and married while serving at the embassy. After Warsaw they were assigned to the embassy in Moscow.

After about a year, they decided to pursue other career options and return to the United States. Dougherty returned to his previous job as a cryptologist, but ended up working at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, near his family’s ranch.

These are the diplomatic cards issued by the government of the Soviet Union to William Dougherty and Jane Simons during their service there. Similar cards are routinely issued to diplomats by the countries in which they serve.

Gift from Eleanor Dougherty

3. Camera used by Robert Mosher during the 1975 South Vietnam evacuation

At U.S. diplomatic posts in South Vietnam in April 1975, diplomats and others worked diligently to evacuate personnel and vulnerable South Vietnamese citizens to safety as North Vietnamese forces approached.

Robert Mosher was one of these diplomats. He was transferred to the U.S. consulate in Can Tho but was towed to the embassy in Saigon to help with the evacuation. An amateur photographer, Mosher carried this 35mm Nikon film camera and captured part of the helicopter evacuation process aboard the USS Vancouver.

Gift of Robert A. Mosher

4. Inscribed plate, gift from Jehan Sadat to Esther Coopersmith

In September 1978, US President Jimmy Carter invited Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to the US for peace negotiations. This would lead to the historic Camp David Accords and bring about peace between the two countries.

Ahead of this meeting, Esther Coopersmith, a well-known Washington, D.C. area host and U.S. representative to the United Nations during the Carter administration, decided that she should introduce the women of Begin and Sadat.

As a hostess who often hosted politicians from different countries and political parties, Coopersmith saw her role as bringing people together to make personal contacts and thereby promote compromise or diplomacy.

“I was very fortunate to know both women, Aliza Begin and Jehan Sadat,” Coopersmith recalled in a 2022 interview with The Washington Diplomat Newspaper. “And I thought it was time to bring them together. They didn’t need an intruder to talk, they could talk directly. That’s what they did, and it worked.”

This decorative plate bearing Jehan Sadat’s likeness was personally inscribed “To Dear Esther” and was gifted to Esther Coopersmith on March 28, 1979, two days after the signing of the formal peace treaty made possible by the Camp David Accords.

Gift of Esther L. Coopersmith

5. UN identification and business cards, Judith Heumann

Judith Heumann was an internationally recognized leader in the disability community and a lifelong advocate for the civil rights of disadvantaged people. She was known to many as the “Mother of the Disability Rights Movement.”

As a child, Heumann suffered from polio and spent most of her life in a wheelchair. Her experiences led her to become a lifelong advocate for people with disabilities.

From 2010 to 2017, she served in a diplomatic capacity as a special adviser on international disability rights at the U.S. Department of State. This United Nations ID card and business card are from her time at the State Department.

Gift from Jorge Pineda

6. Poster, President Clinton’s visit to the Brandenburg Gate

In July 1994, President Bill Clinton visited Germany. More than four years after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Germany as a whole and the city of Berlin were fully reunified.

Clinton spoke in front of the Brandenburg Gate, where President Reagan famously urged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987 to “open this gate” and “tear down this wall.” This poster promoted Clinton’s speech. With the gate now open and the wall gone, President Clinton and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl strolled under the gate together to highlight a united Germany and strong American-German relations.

As part of his trip to Berlin, President Clinton also officially deactivated the U.S. Army’s Berlin Brigade, which had been established in 1961 as the Wall was being built and tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union were escalating.

Gift from Llewellyn Hedgbeth

7. Ambassador Keith Harper moccasins

In 2014, Keith M. Harper became the first Native American to be appointed U.S. Ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council. As a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, Harper served as the U.S. Permanent Representative to the UN Human Rights Council until 2017. These moccasins were a gift from his wife’s family, citizens of the Caddo Nation, on the occasion of Harper’s swearing-in ceremony as ambassador.

Gift of Ambassador (Ret.) Keith M. Harper and Mrs. Shelby Settles Harper

8. Presidential Medal of Freedom & Citation from Secretary Madeleine Albright

Minister Madeleine Albright was a trailblazer as the first woman to hold office from 1997 to 2001. She also served as US Ambassador to the United Nations (1993–1997). One of her most significant achievements was helping to expand the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to include more countries.

In 2012, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor. As part of her commitment to donate the pins she wore and used as a diplomatic tool to NMAD, Albright also committed to donating her Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The citation said that through her diplomatic career, Albright “advanced peace in the Middle East, nuclear arms control, justice in the Balkans and human rights around the world.”

Gift of Madeleine K. Albright

9. Book with inscription to Ambassador Richard Schifter

As a small boy in the 1930s in Vienna, Austria, Richard Schifter often walked past the Austrian Consular Academy with his father. Richard told his parents that he wanted to be a diplomat one day. At one point his father took him aside and explained: “We are Jews. Jews can’t get jobs as diplomats.” Young Richard was crushed.

When the Nazis took over Austria in 1938, Richard and his family tried to escape. He managed to get a visa to emigrate to the United States; his parents weren’t. They were eventually forced into a concentration camp and murdered in the Holocaust.

This book, given to Schifter by a mentor in August 1940, contains the inscription: “May your desire to become an ambassador be successful.” Schifter served in the military and then studied law to pursue a career as a lawyer specializing in human rights law to build.

In 1981, five decades after declaring he wanted to become a diplomat, Schifter was nominated as the U.S. representative to the UNESCO Committee on Conventions and Recommendations. In the following years he held other UN positions and in 1985 was appointed Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs at the State Department.

Gift from the family of Ambassador Richard Schifter