Lifelong philhellene and three-time ambassador Robert Keeley died last Friday at 85. His experience of Greece stretched over his lifetime. He and his brother, the translator Edmund Keeley, are major figures in the diplomatic and cultural relationship of our two countries. Born in Beirut, he grew up in 1930s Salonica, where his father was the consul general. He graduated from Princeton and then went to serve as a commanding officer in the Coast Guard during the Korean War. He joined the Foreign Service shortly afterward. One of his early assignments was a political officer in Athens. He was forthright about his opposition to human rights abuses under the junta, and he wrote about his experience years later in his 2010 book “The Colonels’ Coup and the American Embassy: A Diplomat’s View of the Breakdown of Democracy in Cold War Greece.” Keeley went on to serve as deputy chief of mission in Uganda and Cambodia. His picture ran in papers around the world in 1974, when the US evacuated the Embassy in Phnom Penh; Keeley is seen right behind US ambassador John Gunther Dean. Keeley returned to Africa to serve as ambassador to Mauritius and then Zimbabwe, which had just gained its independence from Britain. He came to Greece as ambassador in 1985, and served four years. He talked about his experience in an oral history he took part in: adst.org/OH%20TOCs/Keeley,%20Robert%20V%20.toc.pdf. He is fondly remembered by his former colleagues, both Greek and American. He retired after he finished in Greece but did not stop working. He started a publishing house to get out works that had been unjustifiably ignored. He wrote about US foreign and domestic policy, lectured at universities around the US, and revisited Greece. According to the Washington Post obituary, after retirement he carried a business card that read “Consulting Iconoclast.” RIP. The Washington Posts obituary is available here: washingtonpost/national/robert-v-keeley-outspoken-ambassador-dies-at-85/2015/01/10/f1da359e-984f-11e4-8005-1924ede3e54a_story.html
Posted on: Wed, 14 Jan 2015 09:09:19 +0000
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