Straight-shooting ambassador

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34128, 14 April 1976, Page 6

Straight-shooting ambassador

(Sy

LLOYD TIMBERLAKE.

through N.Z.P.A.)

LONDON.

The British are having a hard time knowing what to make of their new Ambassador from the United States, but they may have an even harder time figuring out her rancher husband. Mrs Anne Armstrong, the first woman to represent the United States at the Court of St James, has spent almost 20 of her 48 years on a Texas ranch, and the popular British press has treated her accordingly. “Howdy Pardner,” was the simple headline above one tabloid’s story of the Armstrongs’ recent arrival in London. “Annie Oakley heads for Belfast,” a British domestic news agency headlined her planned trip to Northern Ireland. Straight shooter “She talks as straight and true as a Texas ranger’s sixshooter,” the “Daily Express” said. The serious press has taken pains, however, to point out that Mrs Armstrong, a mother of five, was bom in New Orleans, educated at Vassar College in New York State and has served as co-chairman of the Republican Party and counsellor to President Nixon with Cabinet rank during Watergate. “Everybody is doing this ‘Annie Oakley’ bit,” grumbled a United States Embassy press attache, despite the rumour that “Annie Oakley” is fast becoming the Ambassador’s nickname in the Embassy itself.

But the real Texan of the pair is her husband, Tobin, born and raised in South Texas where his family owns the Armstrong ranch, of 50,000 acres, about the same size as Birmingham, Britain’s second largest city.

Mr Armstrong also refuses to fit a stereotype. A man accustomed to managing 5000 head of cattle might be excused a little male chauvinism in refusing to play official second fiddle to an ambassador wife.

Support role But no. “I see my role as being number one support to my wife — to do what I can to make her role effective,” he said in an interview. “Anne knows that I am not. going to push doilies around and rearrange the flowers — and she doesn’t expect me to,” said the rancher, who has an Embassy office from which he expects to help represent in Europe, the United States Department of Agriculture. Yet, his first appearance in deputising for his wife

was a tour of the American exhibits at an “Ideal Homes” Show here, the sort of appearance one would expect from the wife of an ambassador. Asked if he feared getting entangled in cocktail party political debates with the diplomatic corps, he replied: “I hope I have learned to keep my foot out of my mouth by now.” Besides keeping his foot out of his mouth, the 54-year-old rancher displayed the western skill of grasping the bull by the horns recently when “Punch,” the British establishment humour magazine, ran a spoof on him and his wife in the guise of “The lone Ambassador’s” diary. The article included an imaginary diary entry made after the Ambassador presented her credentials to the Queen at Buckingham Palace: “Y’all wooden b’lieve the conditions these heah folks are living in, ah seen poh white trash with more goin’ fer em, . . . that theah house o’ their’n . . aint got but foah acres . . .” The take-off ends with “Mah b’loved Tobin” killed in a shoot-out with British bobbies outside the Ambassadorial residence in Regents Park. Embassy staff feared the Armstrongs would be very embarrassed by the whole thing. Instead, Mr Armstrong took the “Punch” piece along to his first formal luncheon here and had the English actress, Joyce Grenfell, read it aloud in “a per-1

Ifect Southern red-neck acicent.” The guests loved it. I Neither is Armstrong ■ ashamed of the Texas image. The manager of their club in San Antonio visited London shortly after they arrived in early March and taught the residence’s Austrian chef to cook such Mexican-Texas specialities as enchiladas, gaspacho and guacambole. The English butler now mixes a mean Tequila Sour and Margarita, and the Armstrongs’ first dinner party was a Mexican-style affair with music provided by a Paraguayan trio which won

rave reviews from the Embassy staff. Mr Armstrong enjoys fishing and hunting. “But when you say hunting over here they think you mean riding after hounds. I mean shooting,” he explained. He also plays polo and has had numerous invitations to join clubs. Both Armstrongs play tennis on the residence courts, when it is not raining. but Mr Armstrong says he does not mind the rain. “In South Texas when it

rains we are so happy I just don’t get depressed by t over here. I guess that’s just a rancher's reaction to moisture.”