Diplomats' Housemother

"Mr. Will," a short, slight figure in a crumpled brown suit, walked proudly across the stage of Washington's big Departmental Auditorium and shook the hand of Secretary of State Dean Acheson. Acheson had summoned 62-year-old Mar- vin Wilbur Will to present him with the Distinguished Service Medal, the department's highest award.

Mr. Will has grown old in the State Department. As boss of the 15-man employee services section of the division of foreign service personnel, Mr. Will has been a sort of Stateside housemother for diplomats. Before a consul or an ambassador goes overseas, Mr. Will arranges for his inoculation against typhoid, yellow fever, bubonic plague. When Mrs. Ambassador wants to insure her mahogany breakfront before shipping it to New Delhi, Mr. Will quotes her rates and advises her on routes. If she wants to stock up on U.S. luxuries, Mr. Will has a list of stores which grant departing diplomatic personnel 20 to 40% discounts. For the men, he can arrange cut rates on everything from dispatch cases to De Soto sedans.

His greatest pride is his job as official swearer-in. Said Mr. Will: "I swear in all foreign service employees, and as long as I swear them in, they are going to stand up and raise their right hands. It is a very important and solemn thing, and I insist on it." But some of his chores are more complicated. He remembers with embarrassment the time when he had the ashes of a diplomat shipped back by diplomatic pouch. When the pouch was opened in Washington, Mr. Will found that the cardboard container had split, and the ashes were spilled. Mr. Will summoned an undertaker, who carefully sifted the diplomat out of the mail, put the ashes in a suitable urn and sent them on to the waiting relatives.

The son of a Virginia farmer, Mr. Will attended normal school. He came to Washington in 1910 and got a job in the Census Bureau, but soon switched to State. In his 37 years of service, he has served under twelve Secretaries. Of them all, he considers Charles Evans Hughes (1921-25) the ablest. "A dignified man who looked the part--the outstanding Secretary of his time," says Mr. Will.

Mr. Will was among 100 State employees to get awards and congratulations from Secretary Acheson last week. "If their stories were well known, the perennial ghost of the aloof, striped-pants diplomat would disappear," said Dean Acheson, with the wistful air of a perennial ghost.

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