Thomas D. Bowie

Pillar of labor diplomacy in Europe, linguist.

Thomas D. Bowie died in Sandy Spring, MD, on November 04, 2011.

Born in Duluth, MN, in 1917, he graduated from Carleton College, in Northfield, MN, in 1938. In 1938-1939, a grant from the University of Paris enabled him to travel there to study diplomatic history and International Law. In the summer of 1939, he received a second scholarship, this time to study at the Hague Academy of International Law, returning to the United States just days before the outbreak of WWII in Europe. He returned to Carleton College to work as an Instructor in French and International Relations, receiving an MA from there in 1940. When the United States entered the war, he left Carleton to join the Foreign Service Auxiliary, admitted in February 1942 to work in the Office of World Trade Intelligence, on matters related to economic warfare. Sent to Madrid in April 1943, he worked in particular on the restriction of wolfram (tungsten) trade from the Iberian peninsula to Nazi Germany and on receiving downed Allied aviators exfiltrated out of France by the French Resistance.

He was admitted into the career Foreign Service after passing the examinations in Madrid, and at the end of the war was stationed in Marseilles, where he met his first wife and the mother of his children: Margit Koren Ramm (1916-1975) had come to France with the Red Cross following the Allied landings in Normandy.

After a brief posting as a Consular Officer in Rabat (1948), he was stationed in Warsaw from 1949-1951, a posting that seems to have had a defining impact on the direction of his later career. The brutality of the Stalinist policies that he saw imposed on devastated Poland made of him a dedicated Cold Warrior, committed to limiting Communist influence in postwar Europe. He became especially convinced of the essential importance of free and democratic trade unions as a counterforce to the attraction of Communism for working people in western Europe: a strong free labor movement was in his view the most effective and perhaps only way to avert « social war ».

In his next posting, to Milan from 1951- 1955, he is thus already described as a « Labor and Political Reporting Officer ». This period indeed coincided with the flowering of what came to be known as American « labor diplomacy », devoted to encouraging non-Communist trade unionism around the world.

After a period of training in Soviet economics at Cornell University (1955-1956) and a short posting in Washington, he was sent as Political and Economic Advisor to the Embassy in Saigon (1957-1959). Following a year teaching Strategic Studies at the Army War College in Carlisle, PA (1959-1960), he was sent as Labor Attaché to the Embassy in Paris (1960-1962).

This was his first posting fully in the context of the Labor Attaché program, to a country where, like Italy, the encouragement of non-communist trade unionism was perceived as strategic in the Cold War context.

But it was in Italy that the communist-affiliated unions were largest at that time. Thomas Bowie was sent to Rome as Labor Attaché In 1962, for what became a possibly uniquely long posting for the Foreign Service, 11 years, so that he became a leading specialist on Italian labor affairs.

The functions of Labor Attaché were not only directed at local trade unionism however; part of the mission involved raising the awareness of US employers abroad, including the US military, of the importance of compliance with local labor law, often more developed than that of the United States.

After his long tour in Italy, Thomas Bowie returned to the US in 1973, to work in the State Department office of International Labor Affairs (S/IL), until his retirement from the Foreign Service in 1977.

Able to communicate in 14 languages, Thomas Bowie had a deep love of words and exceptional gifts as a linguist. This enabled him to pursue a rewarding second career as a translator from French and especially Italian into English until the very last years of his life. An active member of the American Translator’s Association, he worked in particular in quality control for the French and Italian versions of National Geographic Magazine as well as for numerous international organizations.

His convictions only deepened with age concerning the importance of the preservation of democracy and for protecting the rights of working people to a decent wage and to a fair collective bargaining process. In the last years of his life, despite increasingly disabling physical handicaps, he continued to take roles of leadership and responsibility in his community. Strengthened by a deeply held Christian faith, he strove unfailingly to apply his exceptional energy, determination and passion to the goal of contributing positively to the society around him.

He is survived by his daughter, Karen Bowie of Paris, France and his son and daughter-in-law, Charles Bowie and Beatrice Akosua Addai Bowie, of Germantown, Maryland ; and by his stepsons and stepdaughters-in-law, Fred Schulte and Jeni Bergal, of Silver Spring Md, Philip Schulte Jr and Mia Schulte of Olympia Wa.

Bowie, Thomas D. age 94

On November 04, 2011, Thomas D. Bowie of Silver Spring, Maryland.

Beloved Husband of Margit Koren Ramm Bowie (1916 - 1975) and Katherine Regan Schulte Bowie (1916 – 2006)

Beloved father of Karen R. Bowie and Charles T. Bowie, beloved father-in-law of Beatrice Akosua Addai Bowie, of Germantown, MD

Devoted step-father and step-father-in-law of Frederick Schulte and Jeni Bergal, of Silver Spring, MD, and Philip Schulte Jr and Mia Schulte of Olympia, WA.

Services will be held Monday November 21, 2011 at Rock Creek Cemetery, Rock Creek Church Road and Webster Street, NW Washington, DC , Diplomatic and Consular Officers, Retired (DACOR) Section 2, Lot 147

Memorial Donations may be made to:

American Cancer Society https://www.cancer.org/Involved/Donate/DonateOnlineNow/index