Education
Biographies of the Bequestors
In addition to the annual donations of members, the DACOR Bacon House
Foundation has received generous bequests from the estates of DACOR members
to support the scholarship and fellowship programs.
Please click on the names below to learn more about each benefactor.
Louis Goethe Dreyfus
Born in
Santa Barbara, California
on November 23, 1889, Louis Dreyfus was graduated from The Hotchkiss
School and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Yale University
in 1910 and 1911.
He entered the Foreign Service and was assigned to Berlin. Mr. Dreyfus served thereafter
at an impressive number of posts including
Callao, Quibdo, Budapest,
Sofia, Sivas, Malaga, Palermo, Dresden, Oslo, Naples and
Copenhagen.
In addition to serving
as a Foreign Service Inspector, Louis Dreyfus was for six years
Counselor of the Embassy at Lima before
being appointed in 1939 Minister to Iran
(later concurrently to
Afghanistan). Appointed Minister
to Iceland, he also served as President Roosevelt’s
special representative with rank of Ambassador at the inauguration of Iceland’s first
President. After promotion to the class of Career Minister in
1946, Mr. Dreyfus was Minister at Stockholm prior to assignment to head the
Inspection Corps in the Department. Immediately before his
retirement in 1950, Mr. Dreyfus served as Ambassador to
Afghanistan.
Ambassador G. McMurtrie Godley
George McMurtrie Godley, known as Mac, was
born in New York City on Aug. 23, 1917. He graduated
from the Hotchkiss School and Yale
University and pursued graduate studies
at the University
of Chicago before
joining the Foreign Service in 1941.
He served in
France, Switzerland,
Belgium,
Cambodia and Congo before being named ambassador to Congo (later Zaire) in 1964. He was then
appointed US Ambassador to Laos, during the Vietnam War.
He played a central role in American efforts to defeat North Vietnamese
and indigenous Communist forces there. Later, President Richard M.
Nixon named him US Ambassador to
Lebanon. Shortly after his tour
of duty ended in 1976, Mr. Godley retired. He founded and was the
first president of the Glimmerglass Opera in Cooperstown, NY,
and became chairman emeritus when he died. He was also chairman
of Hartwick
College in Oneonta,
New York, and of Fox Hospital.
George McMurtrie Godley died in 1999 in
Oneonta. His wife, Betty Godley, who died in 2005, bequeathed
funds to the DACOR Bacon House Foundation to fund scholarships in his
memory.
Heyward G. Hill
Mr. Hill, a native of Louisiana, died on October 5, 1989 at the age
of 89. He attended Louisiana State
University and also studied in both France and Switzerland. Prior to joining
the Foreign Service in 1930, Mr. Hill worked briefly as a sugar chemist
in Cuba
and Hawaii.
His first posting was to Kobe, Japan.
In 1931 he was transferred to Yokohama and then to
Buenos Aires. His other assignments took
him to Geneva, Panama City, Algiers,
and Ankara.
In 1949, he was named Counselor of Embassy in
Jidda, Saudi Arabia. His last posting
in 1957 was Alexandria,
Egypt, where he served as Consul
General. After retiring from the Foreign Service in 1960, Mr. Hill
made his home in Athens.
His very generous bequest enables the DACOR
Bacon House Foundation to provide many deserving students with the
financial assistance necessary to help them attain educations in the
field that he found so rewarding.
Doris and Jette Lee Luellen
Doris M. Luellen, a long-time budget and
administrative officer, was a native of
Oklahoma. Miss Luellen graduated from the University of Southern California, and worked for
insurance companies from 1930 to 1939. During World War II, Doris
Luellen was a civilian employee of the War Department in
Honolulu. In 1947 she joined the Foreign
Service and was posted to
Stockholm. Subsequently, she was
transferred to Athens where she was
administrative officer for the U.S. Educational Foundation. Other
postings include Paris,
Rangoon, the Department,
Nairobi
and Santo Domingo.
She received a meritorious honor award from the Department in 1966.
Jette Lee Leellen was born in
Oklahoma, lived in Hawaï, and began work in World War II
with the Signal Corps in Los Angeles. She too
joined the Foreign Service in 1947. Jette Lee served in Athens (like her sister), Paris,
Rabat, Singapore
and Washington.
Both sisters were greatly appreciated for
their friendly and fun-loving natures.
Jack K. McFall
Jack K. McFall, a native of
Takoma, Washington,
graduated from the Georgetown School of Foreign Service in 1929 and
earned his law degree from
National
University in 1933.
He was a member of the D.C. bar, and was a senior staff member of the
House Appropriations Committee from 1929 to 1946 with time out for
service as a commander in the Navy overseas during World War II.
He entered the Foreign Service in 1947 and was assigned to
Montreal for two years. In 1949 he was
transferred to Athens and, at the end of 1949, he was the first Foreign
Service officer to be nominated to be Assistant Secretary for
Congressional Relations where he served with great distinction until
1952 when he was named Minister and then first Ambassador to Finland,
when the Legation was raised to an Embassy in 1954. He retired in
1956.
In retirement he was active in DACOR as a
member of the Board of Governors and of the Washington Institute for
Foreign Affairs.
Recognizing the potential of TV and the movies in building
awareness of and a much needed constituency for the Foreign Service, and
in the interest of providing a permanent repository of Foreign Service
lore, Mr. McFall sponsored a series of awards for the most interesting
accounts of foreign service adventures. When the movie and TV projects
did not work out, these were edited by Ralph Hilton and published under
the title Tales of the Foreign Service.
Dr. Ben H. and Clare Roy Thibodeaux
Born in Louisiana
in 1903, Dr. Ben Thibodeaux graduated from Louisiana State
University in 1925,
received his MS degree from Iowa State College, and his PhD from
Harvard. After having served as a Colonel in the U.S.
Army overseas, he served in various economic and development positions
in Paris. Following his four
years in Paris, he was assigned to Vienna, Ottawa and Tokyo, where he completed
his Foreign Service career as Consul General.
Mr. Thibodeaux played an instrumental role in
implementing the Marshall Plan and in encouraging the economic
integration of Western Europe
Mrs. Thibodeaux attended the University of Southwestern Louisiana and later the
Sorbonne. She taught in Lafayette Parish for three
years. Mrs. Thibodeaux accompanied her husband during
his Foreign Service career, and during their time in
Japan she studied flower arranging at the
Sogetsu
School.
In retirement, she was active in the Opelousas Garden Club as well as
the Pink Ladies Auxiliary of Doctors’ Hospital.
Harriet C. Thurgood
Harriet Thurgood was born in
Virginia
and raised in the Panama Canal Zone.
Her father, an engineer, had participated in the construction of
the Canal and then helped to manage it.
Miss Thurgood attended a business school before
being hired to work as a clerk for the Panama Canal Zone Authority in
1934. Two years later, she was appointed as a Foreign
Service Staff employee and worked as a clerk at the US Embassy in
Panamá. She was transferred to Lagos, Nigeria,
in 1943 and then to Rome
in 1945. Later that year, she was assigned to
Milan
with the rank of vice consul. In that capacity, she
granted visas to Italian and other immigrants and visitors and passports
to American citizens. She was responsible for
ensuring the welfare and, occasionally, determining the whereabouts of
American citizens in the Milan
consular district.
Miss Thurgood was posted to
Colombo,
Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1947, just as the country gained
its independence from
Great Britain. She
was transferred in 1959 to Rangoon, in
newly independent
Burma. After a few
months there, she received orders to proceed to
London. She served as a vice
consul at the US Embassy for five years. In 1954 she
returned to the State Department. A year later, she
received her commission as a Foreign Service Officer.
She was assigned to the US Embassy Vientiane,
Laos,
in 1956 with the diplomatic rank of second secretary.
She was ordered to the Consulate General at Ciudad Juárez, Mexico,
on the border with the
US, in 1958. She
retired there in 1965, concluding a noteworthy diplomatic career of 29
years.
Miss Thurgood settled in DeLand, Florida,
near the home of her sister, Virginia Thurgood Bingham, and her husband,
retired Foreign Service Officer George Bingham. Miss
Thurgood was an active volunteer in various community groups and enjoyed
traveling. She died on January 9, 2005, at age 91.
At Miss Thurgood’s request, Mrs. Bingham’s gift to the DACOR
Bacon House Foundation in her memory funds need-based scholarships for
dependents of Foreign Service personnel.
Katherine and S. Pinkney Tuck
Ambassador Pinkney Tuck, a native of Southern
Maryland, began his Foreign Service career as deputy consul in
Alexandria, Egypt in 1913, and then served in
numerous consular and diplomatic positions and at conferences during
both world wars. He was appointed counselor of the U.S. Embassy in
Vichy in 1941, and when Ambassador William D. Leahy was
recalled, he became charge d'affaires, representing the
United States
during the months preceding the Allied landings in
North Africa. He and his wife Katherine and their
staff were interned by the Germans in 1942 and were not repatriated
until 1944. President Roosevelt appointed him Minister to Egypt in 1944, and Ambassador in
1946, where he remained until his retirement in 1948. Ambassador
Tuck then served as the first American on the Suez Canal Board until
1957, dividing his time between Paris and Geneva.
Ambassador and Mrs. Tuck were active in a number of organizations in
Europe, and after Mr. Tuck's death in April of 1967, Mrs. Tuck remained
actively involved in the community near her home in Detroit, Michigan
until her death.
