Resilience and Resolve

These items in NMAD's collection demonstrate the resilience and resolve required of diplomats on a daily basis.

Showing 21–30 of 46 results

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    Embassy Saigon Sidewalk Segment

    Section of sidewalk from outside U.S. Embassy Saigon, South Vietnam. In 1968, when the Embassy was attacked, State Department security officers and U.S. troops skirmished with attackers on the sidewalk which surrounded the Embassy compound’s outer wall. This small section was saved from the site in 2003 as the sidewalk was being…

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    Michael Hoyt’s Day Planner

    Foreign Service Officer Michael Hoyt received the prestigious Secretary’s Award after enduring 111 days in captivity in the Congo in 1964. He was serving as Principal Officer at the U.S. Consulate Stanleyville when he and his staff were taken hostage by the rebel Simbas. They were narrowly rescued in a joint U.S.-Belgian…

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    Michael Hoyt’s Secretary’s Award

    Foreign Service Officer Michael Hoyt received the prestigious Secretary’s Award after enduring 111 days in captivity in the Congo in 1964. He was serving as Principal Officer at the U.S. Consulate Stanleyville when he and his staff were taken hostage by the rebel Simbas. They were narrowly rescued in a joint U.S.-Belgian…

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    Men’s Fedora

    Special Agent Frank J. Madden served with the State Department's Office of Security from January 1942 until 1971. He served on personal protective details for three U.S. Secretaries of State (Acheson, Dulles and Herter) and countless visits by high-level foreign dignitaries, such as the Shah of Iran and the King of Morocco.…

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    Parka Worn by Iran Hostage

    After their release on January 20, 1981, following 444 days held as hostages in Iran, 52 Americans began their long journey home. While en route to Wiesbaden, Germany on a military aircraft, they were given military-issue cold weather parkas to help them keep warm. As the former hostages disembarked from the plane…

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    U.S. Consular Flag

    In April 1975, the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese Army. American diplomats were on the frontlines, organizing what would be the most ambitious helicopter evacuation in history. In the city of Can Tho, Consul General Francis Terry McNamara was instructed to evacuate his 12 or so American…

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    Embassy Nairobi Concrete Fragment

    On August 7, 1998, the U.S. embassies in both Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania were attacked in coordinated truck bombings. Suicide bombers parked trucks loaded with explosives outside each embassy and almost simultaneously detonated them. In Nairobi, approximately 212 people were killed and an estimated 4,000 wounded, while in Dar es…

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    Tear Gas Canister

    U.S. Ambassador to Paraguay Clyde Taylor served during the rule of an anti-democratic and hostile government in the late 1980s. While attending a pro-democracy reception at a private residence on February 10, 1987, the Paraguayan police lobbed this tear gas canister into the garden in his vicinity. Ambassador Taylor and others suffered…

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    “Hostage Cross” Necklace

    Kathryn Koob was a Foreign Service Officer who was serving in Tehran when the American embassy was seized by Iranian militants on Nov. 4, 1979. She became one of two women who were held hostage during the entire ordeal. Koob is a person of deep faith, which sustained her while held captive.…

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    Kathryn Koob's Knit Hat

    Kathryn Koob was a Foreign Service Officer who was serving in Tehran when the American embassy was seized by Iranian militants on Nov. 4, 1979. She became one of two women who were held hostage during the entire ordeal. After their release on January 20, 1981, following 444 days held as hostages,…