Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
I think at this point,
it may be
appropriate
to pay tribute
to someone who actually started
the Fulbright
Commission in Belgium in 1948
Dorothy
Moore-Deflandre.
All of us, of course,
who have worked with Dorothy as I did
for over 20 years,
have appreciated
her enthusiasm for the program
and I always benefited
from her wisdom
about international and educational exchange
But i wonder
how many of you actually know
how it came to be that Dorothy
came to Belgium in 1948.
Dorothy actually
was one of a group of
very young
and very talented
mathematicians who spent
the war years of World War II
in the ...
of the Pentagon
breaking the access code,
which they
did very successfully.
And after the war
it turned out that
a very close friend of hers - and colleague
in this program -
happened to be
the daughter
of Dean Acheson
who at the time
was the Secretary of State
in the cabinet
of President Harry Truman.
And so, one day when she was visiting the Acheson family
in their lovely
Georgetown home,
Dean Acheson asked Dorothy
what she planned to do
now that her wartime assignment had ended.
But Dorothy didn't have any
clear idea at that time, and so Dean Acheson
mentioned to her
that the American government
was about to undertake
a very significant
educational and cultural
exchange program
sponsored by Senator Fulbright
in the American Congress
and that the plan was to open the first
Fulbright Commissions in Europe,
and one of the very first
would be the one in Belgium
so that is how Dorothy
came to Belgium in 1948
eventually became
Dorothy Moore-Deflandre.