Far From Home, Local Roots Grow

NEW DELHI, India — Steven White probably has seen more of the world than any other Buckhead resident past or present.

He is currently America's second-ranking diplomat in India, the latest in a string of postings for the 55-year-old State Department veteran.

Yet, as he has moved around the world, White's Atlanta roots have strengthened.

"(Living overseas) you value the importance of your roots," he said. "I actually credit my ability to live abroad all these years to the fact that I have such strong roots in Atlanta that I can go back and immediately have a core group of close friends."

His career in the Foreign Service began in the Netherland Antilles, six small Caribbean islands north of Venezuela. During his posting to Czechoslovakia, he witnessed the 1989 Velvet Revolution, the protests that toppled the country's Communist government and led to an election won by Vaclav Havel, a former playwright.

"One year I was going to dissident meetings with Vaclav Havel and the next year we were greeting him as our guest speaker on the Fourth of July," White said during an interview at the U.S. embassy in India's capital.

In November 1989 he and his wife Kimberly Ryder White were vacationing in Berlin on the day Germans pulled down large sections of the Berlin Wall, the most visible symbol of the Cold War.

"It was extraordinarily exciting but also frightening because you didn't know what was going to happen next," he said. "The next morning Berlin looked like the largest fraternity hangover I've ever seen."

In Baghdad, his posting until May, he lived in a trailer in the Green Zone, the four-square-mile area in the center of Baghdad, and worked out of a bedroom in one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces. Rockets and mortar shells landed near the building "sometimes several times daily" and when he traveled outside the city it was usually by Blackhawk helicopter.

He keeps several Atlanta mementos in his office: A limited-edition Coke bottle a friend gave him; a pine paving-block made by Southern Wood Preserving Company, the business his great grandfather started when he moved to Georgia at the beginning of the 20th century; a lithograph by Atlanta artist Comer Jennings.

Each summer he returns to see friends and the Buckhead neighborhood where he attended the E. Rivers Elementary School and the Westminster Schools. Even though most of his relatives have left Georgia (his brother lives on Saint Simons Island), "there has never in my mind been any doubt where I'll go when I retire because my ties and friendships in Atlanta are so tight," he said.

Since joining the Foreign Service in 1975, India has been one of his favorite postings. He became the embassy's deputy chief of mission in July.

Describing the world's second most-populous nation, he waxed poetic: "The color, the energy, the vitality – it attacks and assaults the senses at every turn. There's never a dull moment."

Having lived in 10 countries, he offers a plethora of travel advice.

If you can choose only one place to visit overseas, pick India and go to the Taj Mahal — the 17th-century tomb built by an Indian emperor in tribute to his late wife — and the town of Shimla north of New Delhi where "at 8 or 9,000 feet you're looking at the snow-capped Himalayas."

If you visit Malaysia, avoid durians, a highly prized local fruit that is "the nastiest smelling thing in the world and tastes like the strongest Roquefort cheese," he said.

His advice to people who are interested in Foreign Service careers: To succeed, they should have "a certain sense of adventure, a curiosity, a love of travel and of meeting new people who are different from yourself, and a complete open-mindedness to the environment around you," he said.

Students shouldn't romanticize the work.

"When people think of the Foreign Service they think of London, Paris and Rome and what they need to realize is that it's India, China, Baghdad, the Middle East and those other parts of the world where we have exceptional interests," he said.

Foreign Service careers can be especially tough on spouses and his wife has had to be "a chameleon" and change jobs numerous times.

But the difficulties have been offset by the chance to explore the world: "All of our postings have been wonderful," he said.