Patricia Harrison is president and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2008 11:19:44 -0400
From: Gail Chalef ( gchalef at brookings.edu)
Subject: Peter Rodman Funeral Plans

Thank you again for your calls and e-mails regarding Peter Rodman’s death. His wife, Veronique, and their two children are most appreciative of the expressions of sympathy and notes of appreciation that they have received from all of Peter’s friends and colleagues.

For those who might be able to attend, Peter’s funeral will be on Monday, August 11 in Boston, Massachusetts at 1:30 pm. The location of the funeral is:

Temple Israel
477 Longwood Avenue
Boston, Mass.

The burial will take place at the Sharon Memorial Park on Dedham Street in Sharon, Mass. (about a half hour drive from the Temple). Directions to the cemetery will be provided at the funeral service.

Following the burial, a reception will be held at the Harvard Club of Boston (374 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA).

If you are unable to travel to Boston on Monday, a memorial service will be held in Washington in mid-September. We will provide details regarding the Washington service as soon as we have them.

Edward Luttwak is a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

As a DOD intern working in the Middle East office, I had a few opportunities to interact directly with Peter. I remember a kind, pensive man; someone who listened and thought before he spoke in meetings. I remember him going out of his way to thank me, quite unnecessarily, for a briefing book I had prepared for one of his many trips. I remember getting memos and drafts of speeches and letters back down the “chain” with his incisive comments that made me smile, so impressed was I by his clarity, intelligence, and turn of phrase. Most of all, I remember “escorting” him to a meeting and literally running down the long halls of the Pentagon and up many flights of stairs to keep up with him—a man 35 years my senior. The meeting was with a group of students, like me, interested in U.S. foreign policy. He spent over two hours (ninety minutes more than allotted for the session) chatting with the students and dispensing his wealth of accumulated wisdom in anecdotal nuggets.

From all that I hear and the little that I know of Peter Rodman, he was a wise and good man. I am saddened by his death, and feel grateful to have crossed his path, if only for a short while.

Mara Karlin serves as Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy.

Click here for a photo of Peter Rodman and Lebanese prime minister Fouad Siniora, Beirut, November 2006. —MESH Admin

Even as a young teenager Peter was known and admired for his intellect, his wit, and his all-around niceness. He worried at times about the latter, so it’s good to read in these tributes that kindness was a trait that he retained ’til the end. We were a letter-writing generation, and his letters were eagerly anticipated for their cleverness, humor, and witty graphics. We were in touch periodically through our college years and while he worked on the Rockefeller campaign with Dr. Kissinger. Just last fall we exchanged greetings through a mutual camp friend—and I so much regret that feelings about our political differences led me to defer following up with more direct contact.

Did I mention that at 17 he was a magnificent King in our camp performance of The King and I? I can still see him pacing the stage, while singing/speaking “‘Tis a Puzzlement.” He was at his most charismatic.

His passing away is a great loss for myself as well as to the friendship between our two countries. May he rest peacefully in heaven.

Ichiro Fujisaki is ambassador of Japan to the United States.

I first met Peter in 2000 at a think tank talk, and he was kind enough to take an interest in me and my doctoral studies at Harvard. After he entered DOD as Assistant Secretary, he sought to help me get a position at the Pentagon. While I did not have extensive contact with him at DOD, the contact I did have always involved him asking very pointed relevant questions in a humble fashion. His death is shocking.

May Peter rest in peace and his family be comforted.

Michael Makovsky is foreign policy director of the Bipartisan Policy Center, and a former special assistant in the Office of Secretary of Defense.

I hope it will not be out of place to tell you that he was a hilarious and somewhat bumbling member of our extended family. We shared household chores by rotating them through the group. When it was someone’s “week” he/she was responsible for buying the food, and for cooking one meal for the entire house. Our cooking abilities varied, and Peter was noted for the intensity with which he approached his responsibilities. He was by no means the worst cook in the house, either.

We were a motley group: two low-level government bureaucrats, one grad student, one public defender, one arty advertising type, and Peter. We always wondered why he would want to live with us, or perhaps more aptly, why he was allowed to. I don’t think one of us would have passed even the lowest-level security clearance. I suspect Peter was able to reassure Kissinger, Shultz and the White House that we were all clueless and no threat to the civilized world, no matter how disreputable our political views. He was, of course, right—he knew a security threat when he saw one.

He left for work early each morning, returning late in the evening, working Saturdays, but sleeping as late as possible on Sundays, listening to his beloved opera records for hours. He was remarkably discreet about his work; I don’t remember his ever saying anything that could have been construed then or now as a security breach.

His dry sense of humor went over our heads most of the time, and he was delighted when we’d get his intricate jokes. We all despised Nixon, but it didn’t faze him in the least. He, and we, set that aside because he was such a wonderful, gentle human being and because one could not help but respect him and his convictions because of his deep sincerity.

I lost touch with him over the years, and my left-wing politics moderated somewhat, but I remain a staunch Democrat. Nonetheless, I was pleased to see his return to government in the early Bush II years. It was comforting to know that he was in government: it gave me a confidence that my country’s best interests were being looked after.

He’s died too young. My thoughts and prayers go to Veronique and his children during this very sad time. They deserved more time together.

Mr. Rodman was unflappable. His shirt collar never showed the wear and tear of the scorching Hanoi sun, the overwhelming dust and grim, and other physical realities of Hanoi. His visit was a truly cerebral event. He managed to take normally reticent Vietnamese Foreign and Defense Ministry interlocutors and turn them into voluble partners yearning to exchange strategic viewpoints. He was a masterful speaker, and managed to produce coherent presentations in multiple back-to-back sessions with the Defense Ministry, senior Foreign Ministry representatives, officials from the National Defense College, and students and faculty representing the Foreign Ministry’s Institute for International Relations.

He spoke eloquently, in such quotable sentences, and brought order and coherence to wide-ranging discussions. He exerted great command over his audiences during this trip. He evoked powerful images and recollections of the last days of the Paris Peace negotiations in discussions with Vietnamese senior officials and young Foreign Affairs trainees. He had this way of clasping his hands in front of him, and leaning into a microphone that struck me as an act of intimacy with his audience. He took a posture in answering queries from the audience that suggested real, deliberate schooling in both appearance and rhetoric; it struck me that he approached the microphone with the same enthusiasm, confidence and civility whether he was addressing elected officials on the Hill or taking a podium in a fairly fundamental Vietnamese Foreign Ministry teaching facility, run down by age, probably constructed by Soviet-trained builders in the 1960s.

I look over my notes from the June 2005 visit and see that he later reported he was received with “surprising warmth” in Hanoi by senior Defense, Foreign Ministry, and Public Security officials, including then Defense Minister Pham Van Tra, He drew the conclusion, at the end of his trip, that our respective perceptions of regional security were “clearly converging,” and the Vietnamese defense establishment was “eager to do more in the bilateral defense relationship. He noted that there were many “subtle indications” that the Vietnamese had China on their minds. In addition, a Deputy Foreign Minister told of the perception in the region that “America is back” in Asia—engaged and playing a positive role. Mr. Rodman was gratified that he could confirm this, and pleased that the Vietnamese saw the same personal symmetry in a career arc that led him to play a role in negotiating peace, normalizing relations with China, and nudging normalization of defense relations with Vietnam forward.

Coincidentally, on August 4, 2008, the day I learned that Mr. Rodman has passed away, I was scheduled to meet with Dr. Hoang Anh Tuan, the Vietnamese Embassy’s Political Counselor for Congressional Affairs. Dr. Tuan was the Director of the Foreign Ministry’s Institute for International Relations in 2005, and was Mr. Rodman’s host. He recalled the warmth, the frankness, and the true seminar-like quality of Mr. Rodman’s interaction with the Institute’s diplomats in training.

Mr. Rodman gave renewed relevance to the phrase most fitting as recognition of the impression he made as ASD/ISA: He was a gentleman and a scholar.

Lewis Stern is Director for Southeast Asia, Office of the Secretary of Defense.