Remembering Jock Shirley
October 8, 2025By Robert Gosende
It is with great sadness and even greater admiration that I pause today to remember Jock Shirley who passed away yesterday at his home in Gladwyne, PA. Each of us will have their own private memories of their interaction with Jock over the years. He served overseas in Zagreb, Belgrade, Trieste, twice in Rome, New Delhi, and Warsaw, and he occupied numerous senior assignments in Washington including having been Acting Director of USIA and Counselor of the Agency. He ended his career as U.S. Ambassador to Tanzania.
I first met Jock when he was CPAO in Rome during our Bicentennial Year. I was then halfway through a marvelous four-year assignment as Cultural Affairs Officer in Warsaw. I had the opportunity to visit Rome along with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, which we had just presented for two performances in Warsaw.
I certainly had heard about Jock Shirley in Warsaw. Everyone who was anyone among our contacts in Warsaw knew Jock. And all asked if I knew him and asked to be remembered to him. So, I decided to try to meet with him during this visit to Rome and to my great surprise, he agreed.
The meeting took place in his office in the piccolo palazzo on the grounds of the Palazzo Margherita on Via Veneto in Rome. Jock’s office consisted of one elegant room furnished with one small, elegant desk and two antique chairs. There were no in- and out-boxes on the desk; neither was there a telephone. Jock and I sat on opposite sides of the elegant desk. He inquired why I wanted to see him, and I responded that I kept coming across his fingerprints in Warsaw and I wanted to pass along greetings from his many Polish friends. I asked him why he had agreed to meet with me, and he responded that he had enjoyed his assignment to Warsaw enormously and that he wanted to catch up a bit on how things were going there.
As our relationship developed it became apparent that Jock and I did not see eye-to-eye on politics, but we thoroughly enjoyed sharing our differing political opinions to the point where we met often just to share points of view. I found this contact with Jock enormously challenging. He always knew of what he spoke, so I was challenged to always know those things I was responsible for inside out since I could count on Jock to certainly know.
Jock was THE most accomplished Foreign Service Officer of his generation. He was language-qualified in Hungarian, Italian, French, German, Polish, and Serbo-Croatian. Life dealt Jock a challenging hand. He spent his teen-age years in Budapest after having been stranded there with his father when World War II broke out. This meant that he grew up and went to school with the people who would come to run post-war communist Hungary. Jock met every challenge that life in our Foreign Service threw at him with success. And all the while doing this he knew how to keep making friends and widening his experience.
I remember Jock with great admiration and thanks for his friendship and support over the years.
May he rest in peace now….