Ambassador ‘first-rate’ woman

Press, 13 June 1979, Page 21

Ambassador ‘first-rate’ woman

NZPA Washington New Zealand is regarded as fortunate in •having Mrs Anne Clark Martindell appointed as United States Ambassador. “I think we are lucky she is going to New Zealand and I think New Zealand is lucky, too,” said Mr Frank Thompson, a New Jersey Democrat and a long-time personal friend.

"She is remarkably able and competent, a first-rate women,” said Mr Thompson, the current chairman of the House Administration Committee. That seems to be the consensus in Washington. Mr Calvin Raullerson, one of her superiors in the State Department, says Mrs Martindell has done an excellent job in the Foreign Disaster CoOrdination Centre. He describes her as a "very warm, outgoing, understanding person. She will be a very good representative for this country and New Zealanders will like her.” Mrs Martindell is reported to have handled her “foreign disaster” assignment with a sure hand. She has encouraged the development of new programmes and changed the direction of the office in some respects.

She has not been a desk-bound, bureaucrat. She has travelled frequently, immersing herself in the problems that foreign nations, particularly the poorer ones, face wten devastated by natural disasters. She also has the knack of putting people at ease and does not stand on ceremony. The new ambassador has a richly varied family heritage, which is heavily influenced by Scottish blood. The family tree includes two United States Senators, one of whom had Presideniial aspirations, a Scots cotton magnate, and the founder of the Delaware and Lackawanna railroad. Another more distant forebear was John Ledyard, an American adventurer who sailed with Captain Cook on his last voyage as a corporal of the ship’s Marines. One great-great-grand-father, Simon Cameron, and his son, James Donald, sat in the Senate, representing Pennsylvania from 1845 until 1897.

Simon Cameron had unrealised Presidential ambitions but was appointed to Moscow and the United States Ambassador, and was Lincoln’s War Secretary for the first year of the Civil War. James Donald Cameron’s second wife was Lizzie Sherman “a raving beauty,” says Mrs Martindell — a daughter of General Sherman. The cotton magnate was great-grandfather William Clark, who last century established a thread-manu-facturing company in New Jersey, an off-shoot of his Scottish enterprise. Clark returned home after setting up the factory. But his son, John William Clark, a University of Bonn graduate, migrated to the United States to run the enterprise, and stayed. Mrs Martindell’s father, William, deserted cotton for the law, but the company remains peripherally in the Clark family. William Clark was appointed a Federal Judge at 31, the youngest in United States history. He later became a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals. On Mrs Martindell’s mother’s side was a John Blair, eldest son of an old New Jersey farming family whose father died when he was 15. The young Blair took over management of the farm, later opened a country store and traded furs to the Astors and Vanderbilts. He moved on to much bigger things, founding the Delaware and Lackawanna Railroad. Mars Martindell was born in New York. As a young woman, she attended Smith College for two years but ended her studies before graduating, leaving to marry George Scott in 1934. Mr Scott worked for the Clark Thread Company. The couple had three children — Majory (aged 43, and married to a Michigan University professor), George, aged 40, an investment broker in Seattle; and David aged 39, a book manufacturer in Princeton, New Jersey. Mr Scott served in the army in the Second World War. He was stationed briefly in Fiji, and later fought at Guadalcanal, the Solomons, and the Philippines. Near the end of the war,

the Scotts bought a ski resort north of Montreal (“for SUS3O,OOO” Mrs Martindell recalls. "The last time I checked it had been sold for SUSIOM. We should have held on to it.”) But the couple could not raise enough capital to make it a viable proposition and sold out. Mr Scott returned to the Clark cotton business but died soon after. In 1948, Mrs Martindell remarried, to Jackson Martindell, a Texas-born businessman. The Martindells have one son, Roger, aged 29, a lawyer in New Jersey. Mr Martindell, aged 79, lives in Florida. He and his wife are not legally separated, but have lived apart for some years. Mrs Martindell, who studied at Sir George Williams College in Montreal in 1946 and 1947, subsequently spent 16 years teaching in New Jersey. Mrs Martindell's interest in politics was touched off by the Vietnam War. She became, she says, an antiwar activist.

Her brother was Eugene McCarthy’s national campaign chairman in his 1968 White House bid. Mrs Martindell worked for McCarthy in New Jersey. Mr McCarthy recalls her as a quality woman. “She is a good choice for New Zealand,” he said. “She should do a fine job in the diplomatic service.” In the post-McCarthy period, Mrs Martindell was deeply involved in the New Jersey Democratic Party and was appointed vice-chairman. She also became a member of the Democrat’s national committee. She worked for Mr Thompson, and through him met Mr George Mondale, in his campaigns and also for Mr George McGovern in his unsuccessful 1972 Presidential attempt. Mr Thompson and other friends influenced her to run for the New Jersey senate in 1973 and she did. “No-one thought I could win, neither did I,” said Mrs Martindell. “But I won, in a ‘squeaker’.”