Washington's other man in Bermuda

MATTHEW Johnson joined the US Consulate as its deputy principal officer just over a year ago. A career diplomat, he has managed to carve a position for himself and his family in the community, giving his time at the Bermuda Aquarium Museum & Zoo, improving the environment by collecting bottles dumped in Harrington Sound and donating blood at King Edward VII Memorial Hospital on a regular basis. This week, he sat with Mid-Ocean News reporter Heather Wood and photographer Tamell Simons to discuss his storied career and his travels around the world.

Q: When did you first come to the island?

A: I arrived here in mid-September of last year for the first time ever.

Q: What did you know of Bermuda prior to that?

A: What every other American probably knows - sunshine, beaches, motor scooters. I served, initially, in the Foreign Service of the United States in the Bahamas. And they always said, ‘It’s better in the Bahamas’ and I was convinced having lived there that maybe they weren’t telling the whole story. I think it is better in Bermuda. And that’s why I’m here for three years - I was there for about a year and a half. You can draw your own conclusions from those times.

Q: How did you end up in your current post?

A: You do something similar to what our US military does in normal times which is, you submit a bunch of assignments, jobs you like and places you’d enjoy - in case of the Navy, which is my background. The ship you’d like to serve on, for example, or the planes you’d like to fly. And then you let your interests be known to those commands or those posts - in the case of the foreign service and you put your best foot forward and you say, ‘Here I am. I’d love to come work there for ‘X’ number of years and you’re either chosen for that or you move on to ‘Plan B’.

Q: And in your case?

A: In February of 2006, my predecessor had curtailed from here and there was an opening. It’s often tough to run a place like this without somebody who has the proper authorities. In my case I sign contracts, I certify payment vouchers so the vendors get paid on time and so on. And without somebody to do that you’re up against (a wall). So at that point, they put out an All Points Bulletin on the job. I’d been watching Bermuda from a distance, for years. I thought it was an interesting place - a small post. And the opportunity was open and I let my interest be known to the European Bureau in Washington, they let Mr. Slayton know there was a candidate, he called me early one morning in Russia where I was serving. It was about three o’clock, he woke me up and the answers he heard on the phone were apparently what he wanted to know about me in terms of my abilities and background and capacity and within about a week he said, ‘Yeah. Go ahead.’

Q: Is this a diplomatic post?

A: Oh yes. My background is in military but I’ve been in the Foreign Service in the United States for 22 years now.

Q: Were your parents involved in the military?

A: That’s a good question. I’m kind of a gypsy by nature and by upbringing. My father was an engineer for the Boeing company, which meant every two or three years we’d move. There’d be a new contract in Florida, in Washington State, Alabama - wherever. We’d pull up stakes and often that meant that the kids would go off and start school, dad would start a new job and my mother would stay behind. My mother is a phenomenal woman by the way. She had to stay behind and wrap up all the loose ends, sell the house normally, because in America, in sort of the middle-class way of looking at life, you don’t rent, you buy. So every time we moved, whether the market was up or the market was down, my mother stayed behind to sell the house. I’m used to it. I get kind of itchy feet every two or three years and so three years here will probably be the right amount of time and then I’ll move on to some other posting in the Foreign Service.

Q: You entered the military right after college?

A: Immediately after high school. I went in during the Vietnam War and I served for two-and-a-half years on active duty as a reservist - they trained people up so you had people to plug into contingencies wherever they are in the world. I got out and went to college on the GI Bill and then I went back in, in 1980 as an officer. I went to Kennedy School in Rhode Island, and was assigned to a destroyer at Norfolk, Virginia. I like the Navy as an organisation so I went twice as opposed to what might be considered a normal, one-time in and out and then you’re done with it.

Q: You never considered the Army or the Airforce?

A: Never. My father was a Navy man. He and I ended up as enlisted men doing the same thing. We were both radiomen. That was, I think, by coincidence. I’m not sure. Maybe he pulled some strings to get me a place in that class after talking with the recruiter. But we ended up as radiomen and then he did the same thing also. He was a radioman in World War II and didn’t go into actual combat during that time, he served in the occupation of Japan. And then he got out - went to school on the GI Bill and went back in during the Korean War. So I’m kind of repeating him. It’s probably pretty boring after a while (for) people watching our family - same old routine.

Q: You mentioned that your father worked for Boeing. It’s odd then, considering the company’s ties with Bermuda that your family never visited.

A: Nope. I never did. He’s been assigned to all different places. He’s been to Washington State, he’s been to Washington DC for Boeing. He himself, and my mother went for a couple of years to Sweden. They were seconded to Rymdbolaget, which is like the Swedish NASA. His purpose there was as an expert on writing proposals. When any corporation wants to get a job or a contract, they have to write a proposal. He’d been doing that for 20 years for the Boeing Company and so Boeing said, ‘Here, we’ve got somebody that can do this. You need that*?>*’ ‘Yes.’ ‘How much you willing to pay”? So I think that probably his status with Boeing continued but I’m sure Boeing pulled down some kind of a finder’s fee for spotting an executive who could do something for them they really wanted done. A few years in Sweden - they really loved it.

Q: I take it you weren’t there?

A: No. At that time I was on active duty on board the USS Briscoe. There was a funny story. When they were enduring the Swedish winter and I was in the Mediterranean, we arranged to meet in Majorca, Spain. It’s kind of a cliché, but when the first lines were thrown off the ship to the pier, my father was right there to catch them. And he really liked that. He was a real Navy man at heart.

Q: What was your first impression of Bermuda?

A: As I said it’s a nice size of diplomatic post. I enjoy the opportunities and challenges of working with our pre-clearance operation, DHS, at the airport. My family I think they believe they’ve died and gone to heaven. My daughter, when she heard we were first going to Bermuda - she’s almost seven now - she didn’t ask where it is or any other questions, she (asked), “What language do they speak in the schools dad”? And I gave her the right answer to that. At that point we were good to go. The assignment was, as far as she was concerned, as far as I was concerned, was a done deal because for three years in Russia, she went to Russian schools. And initially, that was a bit tough. After a month or so she was good to go but the first month or so was rough - new country, new school, new language. But she is what we call a ‘Foreign Service brat’ so she’s learned in her short lifetime to be very flexible and coming here was, kind of a payback. I’ve been to a lot of gritty - not excessively dangerous places with my family, but places that, the interest is largely mine. I’m a Russian studies guy by my educational background and my interests. And those places aren’t as fascinating to my wife and my son and my daughter as here. Or Western Europe or maybe somewhere in South America but this is a treat for my family.

Q: And that’s just because the culture is similar?

A: The culture, the climate - there’s so many reasons I said yes to Bermuda and we’re really enjoying it. 

Q: Your daughter’s name is?

A: Sophia.

Q: Your son’s?

A: In the past, maybe because the places I lived where not that fascinating for him, he would come and visit (during the) summers. He’s a child from a previous marriage. When he heard we were going to Bermuda, you could see the excitement in the answering e-mail from him. And we decided to flip flop the old arrangement with the agreement of his mother whereby he would be here for the school year and in the States for the summers. 

Q: And his name?

A: Henry.

Q: I understand your kids are in public school?

A: My son Henry is at CedarBridge and Sophia is at Somersfield.

Q: That’s an unusual decision wouldn’t you say? Don’t many ex-pats send their kids to private school?

A: I’d been to CedarBridge a couple of times before my son came to join us this August. And the infrastructure over there, the building, the computer classrooms - everything appears to be there. The teachers I’ve met are very competent and dedicated. I’ve had a couple of conversations with (Kalmar) Richards, the headmistress….A lot of people say, ‘The public schools this and the public schools that’. I could have had Henry go to Saltus or to Warwick Academy but I think everything is there to enable a child to learn as long as you have the cooperation, the working together between the school and the parents. And that’s all there. So why not? You’ve got to have all these parts fit together to make it a good educational experience and I believe that’s a sound decision to make based on those criteria.

Q: And he’s enjoying himself?

A: Oh yeah. He’s plugged in socially. He’s active in the IT extracurricular stuff. He went to a swim meet this fall as a swimmer. He’s interested in debate - his English teacher is also the debate teacher - so I think this is going to be a great experience for him and, once again, to do it in Bermuda is like the cream on the top of that churn. As you churn away to make the butter there’s all this rich stuff on the top.

Q: I understand you’ve really embraced the community. What are you involved in?

A: Last winter we had an American Society softball team. I was the pitcher. They kept looking around for somebody else but I guess I’m enough of a robot so I can always (prevent people from walking a base). So I ended up being the normal pitcher for the team. I kayak on the Sound year round and I collect bottles from the bottom of the Sound when the weather and the water temperature permit.

Q: What temperature are you okay with?

A: Well right now it’s gotten to the point where if you don’t wear a wetsuit and you’re not really swimming actively, you get chilled. You put on a wetsuit and I can’t get down to where the bottles are so my swimming over the wintertime is pretty much limited to a quick dip in the morning and, I go running, and I’m a little bit steamed up I’ll jump into the water at Harrington Sound after I finish running. 

Q: That’s still pretty adventurous wouldn’t you say?

A: It’s very un-Bermudian, I know.

Q: Do you compete in the races here?

A: No. I’ve never had what anybody would call extraordinary speed or endurance. I’m kind of flatfooted. I run strictly for my health. I run along the railway trail over in Hamilton Parish.

Q: You mentioned about the different places you’ve been to, where else have you lived aside from Russia and the Bahamas?

A: I met my wife in Indonesia when I was serving there at the consulate in Surabaya. I served for a year in Taiwan and, as I mentioned, a year and a half in the Bahamas until they snatched me to go work in Russia. Toward the end of the Cold War they were looking for people who had good credentials and spoke the language and as I said, Russia is my area so I was snatched out of the Bahamas to go there. Vilnius, which is part of the old Soviet Union, Tbilisi, Georgia - now sort of on the cutting edge between the relationship of the US with Russia these days. So I go to interesting places and hopefully my family will find enough to do so they don’t get bored out of their gourds.

Q: You mentioned the Cold War. Considering your expertise, any fears that you might defect? Spy?

A: A case in point, I was looking for a job coming out of college with a degree in Russian language and literature. There aren’t a lot of jobs right on the open market for skills like that. If you don’t want to go into the government and you don’t really want to proceed with an academic career, there’s not much. So I was talking with one of my professors, about going to work in what was then the Soviet Union, for a glossy magazine that depicts Soviet life on a monthly basis. And she said, ‘Well the one thing you have to consider, if you go to live in the Soviet Union, people are going to have questions in their mind forever after as to whether you were turned into a spy while you were there.’ So yes, there was always that consideration and from the State Department standpoint as well, when they send people over there, you always have to be on your toes. Because the Russian intelligence services are very active, very capable, these aren’t stupid people. They’re looking for an opening and they’ll take advantage of somebody serving over there - even now.

Q: What’s been the greatest place you’ve lived abroad so far? Don’t say Bermuda.

A: That’s a tough one. For a gypsy to say the best experience - I guess it’d have to be the three years I just spent in East Russia. It’s a posting that is far, far from the Embassy in Moscow, so you’re expected to deal with issues and situations as they come up. You’re expected to anticipate things on your own so that when things do come up you’re not totally surprised and at a loss over what to do. When I was there I held down both the management officer job, which is also part of what I do here, and at the same time I was the security officer. That was a wonderful job in that there was never any disagreement between the managing officer and the security officer. I’d say, ‘Managing officer what are you thinking*?>*’ And the security officer would say, ‘Good idea.’ No disagreement. When things came up that were really out of the ordinary I referred to professional security people in Moscow but it was a great job, a great place, a great time. 

Q: Any particular incidents?

A: I woke up one morning in October and the US Congress had just passed a North Korean Human Rights Act which basically said that we are not going to discourage or throw anybody back that comes up to us and asks for sanctuary if that person is from North Korea. About ten days after that law passed we had a fellow on our roof from North Korea who wanted asylum or sanctuary. It was kind of funny that morning as we were just sort of setting up for the day - grab yourself a cup of coffee start checking your e-mail - my systems guy called me on the phone. He said, “Matt, I think you’d better come upstairs and look at something”. And there was (a Post-It note) right outside of the window which said basically, “I am a refugee. Please let me in”. Thus began seven weeks of a very interesting life at the American Consulate in Vladivostok. It changed our way of doing business to the extent that we had to have an American citizen in the building 7/24 because right down the road, about 15 miles, is the North Korean Consulate and these guys don’t kid around. They’re serious people. And the border of North Korea is literally visible from Vladivostok. You can see North Korea across the water and you know there’s North Korean diplomats in the area so we had to take special precautions to protect this fellow while the process of him seeking asylum through the United Nations ran its course. Eventually I got him on a plane and he went to a country that I’m not supposed to name even now, for fear that somebody might follow him there and do him harm. That’s one thing. People say stuff always happens in the Russian (provinces) and it really does. That was just one of them. A number of different incidences pop up. You’ve got to be fast on your feet. You’ve got to be able to think as you go and invent something that has never been done before and make it come out right. 

Q: So that was your best?

A: That was the best job. It was in the country of my choice, where I loved to serve. It had lots of responsibility and authority to go with it and my wife was working, my daughter was thriving. She started her ballet career there if you will. When she arrived here, she was still too young for the In Motion class. It would have required an acknowledgement that she was advanced for her age and they watched her one day and said, “Sure we’ll fit her into the class”. All the other girls are a year or two older and she’s fit in just fine. 

Q: So you come to Bermuda where you know you’re not going to get Post-Its on your window, you’re not going to get people seeking asylum. Isn’t it a bit dull?

A: Well, I mentioned that I’m the management officer here - exactly as I did the same function in Russia. I’m also the public affairs officer here. Astrid (Black) is, defacto, the person who gets everything done - her relationship with the media and so on, but I’m required to make myself available for interviews, for example. That was something that somebody else, a specialist in public relations in Russia, did. So the attraction here is the ambiance, the additional different duties for me, different from what I’ve done my entire career and the closeness to the US. My parents are in Texas - they’re not getting any younger. So the fact that I’m this close to the US and I can pretty much hop on a plane and reach a hub airport and get on another plane is another attraction.

Q: When you leave here where do you go? Back to the US?

A: I’ve been in the Foreign Service for 22 years and I refer to myself as a field hand. I don’t like working in Washington. I’m a patriot and I love America but Washington is a difficult place for an American diplomat to work. If things break just exactly right, we could end up in Japan - which would thrill my wife. She’s Indonesian. We could end up in Central Asia, which is a place that I’ve never been for more than two or three days on vacation. It’s part of the old Soviet Union. I’d sort of like to see how things have developed there in the last 15 or 20 years. Those are probably the two most likely next posts for us. The Central Asian thing has real attraction, I think, for my wife in that these are all nominal Muslim countries and she’s from Indonesia, and she’s Muslim herself. So I think that’s sort of a plus for her, to go to a place that might not otherwise be considered fascinating or fun. We go back to the former Soviet Union and they still have this arts infrastructure there, which I fund really neat - the stuff that, in the past, was funded by the state. The circuses are wonderful there, the ballet for example, the high culture is still there. They’ve had to seek new sources of funding and support, but stuff is still in place and still largely functioning and that’s a huge draw for me. What do I have (to offer) my family*?>* There’s a dusty town, some mountains are there that I find interesting but my wife is kind of a city girl, so it’d probably end up being I think, probably Japan or Central Asia, one of those two.

Q: Your wife’s name is?

A: Wiwik.

Q: As you’ve travelled so much, where do you holiday? Is there somewhere you want to go that you haven’t yet?

A: In June - you have to plan far ahead because there’s only three Americans (working at the Consulate) and we can’t all three be away at once - we have a family reunion. My father’s family, every two years puts on one of these things in a central location in the US. This year we expect to be in Central Michigan, which is kind of nice. I was born in Battle Creek. It’s an opportunity. It’s unlikely, if we don’t do it now, we’ll be able to do it from our next post - whether it’s Japan or Bishkek or wherever, it’s unlikely we’ll be able to do that. So that’s the vacation we have planned, coming up this summer.

Q: I understood you were recently invited to speak at a meeting of the organisation, Phenomenal Women of Bermuda. How did that come about? What did you talk about?

A: I talked about my two grandmothers. That was the hook for the evening. When they initially asked me to speak I wondered, “What am I going to talk about”? Well, I’ve got these grandmothers. One of whom raised four children, kept a farm during the Depression when a lot of other people were losing their land, their houses and pretty much their stability. They had to get on the road and find jobs elsewhere. She was a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse for 35 years in Central Michigan. She retired ultimately as a widow - her husband had passed away in 1963 or ‘64. And so she figured, “What should I do”? The theme of the night at Phenomenal Women was reconciliation and tolerance. And my grandmother, when she retired, asked, “What can I do with my time”? She decided to go off in a truck with a camper on the back, to Alaska. She said, ‘Yeah, that’s a good idea,’ speaking to herself, I suspect, ‘but I’d rather not go alone, I’m 65, 66 years old. Why don’t I talk to my sister Mary? They hadn’t spoken for about 22 years previously and they lived four or five miles apart. So they reconciled and a couple of retired schoolteachers went off to Alaska. They drove all the way in Alaska, had a wonderful adventure in this camper and she followed that up with, she went back to college and finished her degree in Education which, as of the mid-60s, was lacking only the physical education credits. Western Michigan University decided in their infinite wisdom that she probably had had enough physical activity and fitness emphasis over the course of the last four years and she was the oldest graduate in that class. 

Q: And your second grandmother?

A: Different success story. They were dusted out of South Dakota during the Depression and they had four or five years that were very, very dry. People were trying to make a living on what had turned into a desert. They were dusted out of South Dakota and they went back east to Michigan and my grandmother from that time onward, was an employee in a cereal factory in Battle Creek and my father’s father, my paternal grandfather did the same thing, but he always had that need to be out there doing something and making something grow in the soil, so he had a couple of acres next to their house that he made things grow on every year until he was no longer physically able to do that. My grandmother was amazing. In South Dakota she was the postmistress, I think she taught school for a while also because on the frontier, somebody who was educated and could motivate and could move children towards education was like gold. She raised a family of nine children and, via consequence of that, she - as well as my other grandmother, they were both wonderful managers. They really pulled people together and they pointed them in the right direction, gave them a nudge and encouraged them. Two phenomenal, extraordinary women. Very different personalities but great managers, mothers, wives, employees - you name it. And that was the hook for the evening of Phenomenal Women and I just enjoyed talking about the two of them. Both of them are gone about ten years but when they left this world they were sharp as a tack because they never stopped enquiring and learning and looking at new things in a different way. And that’s the example I try to follow in my professional life. Never stop learning. You’ve got to keep reinventing yourself to keep up with change. You’ve got to be adaptable as well.

Q: So there’s no chance that you’ll retire and do nothing?

A: No. If I retire from the Foreign Service of the United States, my idea is to open up a bed and breakfast and teach foreign language to high school kids. That’s what I have in mind. Maybe it’s the teaching gene. Both my grandmothers had it. A lot of my aunts had it. You can’t make a living, a real living - maybe anywhere in the world - a real comfortable living teaching but if you have retirement coming in from another source it enables you to do what you really want to do and I think it’d be great fun.

Courtesy of Royal Gazette reporter Heather Wood