Hon. C. Edward Dillery ’48

Ed Dillery graduated from Ballard High School in 1948. He received a BA with honors from Seattle Pacific College in 1953. In 1965, Dillery attended the University of California at Berkeley and has a MS in the Administration of Nation Security from The George Washington University. He is a member of the SPU honor society, Alpha Kappa Sigma, and was named Alumnus of the Year in 1976. He is chair of the Education Committee of American Foreign Service Association, providing scholarships to children of Foreign Service personnel. For this service, he received the AFSA Membership Achievement Award in 2004. He also is a recipient of the Department of State Wilbur J. Carr Award, given for outstanding management accomplishment.

Ambassador Dillery was a member of the US Foreign Service for 38 years, retiring as a Minister-Counselor, the third highest rank in the service. President Reagan selected him to be US Ambassador to Fiji, the Kingdom of Tonga, Kiribati and Tuvalu where he served from 1984 to 1987. He also was Deputy Chief of Mission at our Embassy in Cyprus from 1976-1978. Among the senior positions he held in Washington DC was Director of Management Operations (equivalent of Assistant Secretary of State), Director of the Office of United Nations Political Affairs and Director of the Office of Southern European Affairs. He also was Executive Director of two congressionally mandated commissions, one on the personnel system of the Department of State and the other on US radio and television broadcasting overseas.

During his career, Dillery had seven overseas assignments and worked on many important foreign policy issues. He was a key member of the team that negotiated the first textile agreement with Japan in 1961. He was a US representative on the UN committee which established the first agreed principles of international law for Outer Space. He wrote the first draft of the agreement with the UK for our use of the island of Diego Garcia as a naval facility. As Ambassador, he was one of the first proponents of US membership in the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone – of which we are now a member. In Vietnam, he was Province Senior Advisor in Quang Ngai Province. He played an important role in making public the details of the 1968 My Lai massacre and assisted in the subsequent Department of Defense investigation.

Ambassador Edward Dillery passed away on January 23, 2016.