| Dave Rank ’86 State Department Diplomat – Afghanistan, China, Taiwan, Greece, D.C., and Mauritius In late 2009 Brother Rank wrote to the alumni association, “I am finishing six years of overseas assignments (Athens, Beijing and now Taiwan) with the US State Department next summer and will return to the Washington area. I’ll study Dari for a year, getting ready for a job as head of the political affairs section at the US Embassy in Kabul. My family will stay behind, including my oldest kid, who starts college next fall. Unlikely she’ll be a Psi U, though, unless she ends up at a school in the northeast” Prior to this note, he earlier reported: “I have been through a couple of jobs at State since I updated my entry. From 2004 until this past summer, I was the head of the Political/Military Affairs office at our embassy in Athens, Greece. We (my wife, three kids, and I) left at the start of the summer to return to Beijing. I’ll be here until 2008, working to establish a series of one-officer foreign service posts in major Chinese cities where we now have no presence. Since there are more than 200 cities in China with more than 1 million people, we have a lot of work ahead of us. In 2008 (likely right after the Olympics), we leave Beijing for Taiwan, where I will head the Political Affairs section at our unofficial liaison office there. (Since we do not have diplomatic relations with Taiwan, we use this informal channel to manage our ties.) When we finish there, my family will have spent more than a decade in China – and 15 years overseas – will be ready for a bit of time back in the States.” Brother Rank was highlighted in the News-Gazette in 2002 in the following article: Incidents involving China kept UI graduate busy By J. Philip Bloomer, The News-Gazette – Published online March 29, 2002 URBANA – After three tumultuous years as a diplomat in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, David Rank returned to Washington last summer expecting something of a respite. But 12 years in the State Department has taught him not to get too comfortable. “We came back to the States thinking things would be a little slower. I had an office overlooking the Mall in Washington. Things were going well,” Rank said. “I was there a little over a month when I watched a plane crash into the Pentagon. Things haven’t been the same since.” Rank, a 1986 liberal arts graduate of the University of Illinois, returned to campus this week in between assignments to visit family and his alma mater. A native of South Bend, Ind., Rank and his wife Dana, also a UI graduate and Indiana native, haven’t done too much of that in recent years. His State Department postings began in Shanghai in 1990, then took him to Port Louis, Mauritius, then to Washington in the State Department Office of Korean Affairs, then to Beijing. In China, he helped coordinate President Clinton’s visit in 1998. He also participated in negotiations between the United States and Beijing after the accidental NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999. Rank was holed up with his wife and three children for two days in their apartment a block away from the embassy during two days of heavy rioting. “It was a horrible set of circumstances,” Rank said. “The bottom line is, it was our fault.” Three Chinese journalists were killed and 20 embassy staffers wounded. NATO said outdated intelligence information sent missiles to a building mistakenly believed to be a Yugoslavian army supply facility. The aftertaste of that incident didn’t make it any easier to deal with the collision of a Chinese jet fighter with a U.S. surveillance plane last spring. Rank credits the presence of Joseph Prueher, the U.S. ambassador to China, a four-star admiral and former commander-in-chief of the Pacific, with resolving the standoff between the countries. The U.S. plane’s 24-man crew was held in China for 11 days. Once they were home, the United States released a videotape of the Chinese fighter pilot’s actions and blamed his aggressive tactics for causing the crash. “He was the best we could have had there,” Rank said. “It’s hard to argue with someone who flew fighter jets.” Rank emphasized that the bulk of his job isn’t always reactionary. In the case of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he said the groundwork laid in establishing relationships with countries around the world allowed for a swift military and diplomatic response from allies. “Sept. 12 the NATO charter was invoked. It wasn’t an issue of getting people to sign on but organizing in the nuts and bolts of support,” Rank said. His own job involved organizing fly routes, overfly zones, refueling and landing logistics. “There’s an awful lot of grunt work done by the State Department and the FBI and many others that pays off in attacks not executed,” Rank said. “How much harm has been avoided because they didn’t have the money because of the millions in terrorist assets we were able to freeze? It’s hard to quantify, but it’s substantial.” Rank, 37, said that while he is a strong believer in the value of the foreign service, it’s not a career he deliberately pursued. A history major at the UI, he received his undergraduate degree but had little idea of what he would do immediately. “I needed a marketable skill. China was the up-and-coming country, so I went there to study. It was a fairly mercenary decision. I thought I’d find a job with a company hoping to expand markets in China,” Rank said. He returned to the United States in May 1989, just after the Tiananmen Square massacre. U.S. business interest in China quickly took a nose dive. Fortunately, Rank said he had taken the foreign service exam while in Taiwan. With his knowledge of Chinese, the State Department offered him a job a few months later. Rank is currently special adviser in the Office of the Undersecretary for Political Affairs, where he is responsible for Asian and Pacific political/military affairs. He also will be teaching at Georgetown University next school year and is scheduled to move to Singapore in 2004. “It’s a real blessing to live in a place where freedoms are rights,” Rank said. “In China, more and more political freedoms are being allowed. But the key word is allowed. “It was tough watching some of the clearly misguided protests here after Sept. 11. So many of our freedoms are taken for granted.” |
| James W. Baker ’69 Dedicated School Board Member Brother Baker served 13+ years on the Northborough Southborough Massachusetts School Committee. For this public service, he received a certificate of appreciation from the Massachusetts Legislature. Brother Baker writes, “as a Class of 1969 member, I was chosen for Skull and Crescent and as an MBA [student] from the Class of 1972, I was chosed for Sigma Iota Epsilon.” However he lists his most important accomplishment as being a husband to Lindy, father to Jennifer and Andrew, and grandfather to twins Kevan and Brendan Flanagan and their sister Ainsleigh, as well as grandfather to Molly Rose Baker. In a more recent note of March 2009, he writes: After many years on the vendor side of the computer business at the following companies: Burroughs (in Indianapolis … just after MBA school), Datapoint (San Antonio), Data General (Westbrough, MA), Honeywell/Bull Worldwide Computer (Billerica, MA), Data General redux (Westborough), IPL Systems (Maynard, MA), and EMC (Hopkinton, MA), I am now a Research Manager at IDC (Framingham, MA) writing insights about the industry that was so good to me. You can find me at this link . Just click on the analysts tab and find me alphabetically. You may even see some of my musings and a mugshot. Tis great fun getting to ask the questions I never wanted asked of me when I was a product manager kind of guy on the vendor side. On the personal side I still keep in touch with some Psi Us at Christmas time… Mike Summers, John Stewart, Pat Gilmore, and Howie Jung, to name a few. Wife Lindy and I have been married for almost 39 years and have been blessed with two children and 5 grandchildren. We all live within a 7 mile triangle of each other in central Mass. This means we can all share each other’s lives up close and personal. I won’t bore you with life’s health and medical challenges but as Jimmy Stewart would say “It’s a Wonderful Life”. Part of that joy has been (and continues to be) identifying myself as a Psi U from the Omicron Chapter at the University of Illinois (at Urbana-Champaign). I can’t get used to the “at Urbana-Champaign” part because it will always be the U of I (aka the Big U) to me just like it was when I arrived as a nervous freshman in 1965 at 313 East Armory, Champaign. Psi U changed my life by making me the Man I was meant to be. And by giving this Only Child so many Brothers that I cannot count them. |
| C. Lyman Emrich ’32 Rhodes Scholar and eminent trademark and copyright attorney Brother Emrich’s record at the Omicron is well known as one of our most outstanding brothers. He served as President of the Omicron Alumni Association and on our Board of Directors for many years. His fully biography falls under our Law category, as this was his career. However, Brother Emrich was very active in Evanston civic life. For six years in the 1950s, Mr. Emrich was an alderman in Evanston’s 2nd Ward. In the 1960s, he served for eight years as 1st Ward alderman. He also was a trustee of Evanston-Skokie School District 65. |
| Christian I. Gross ’17 Chargé d’Affaires – Haiti ’26-27 Brother Gross served in the United States Army from 1917-1920, earning the rank of lieutenant. The record also suggests he worked in the American Field Service in France during WWI, possibly as an ambulance driver attached to the French Army; only one source makes note of this work. What can be confirmed is Brother Gross’ service across the Caribbean for the State Department. Though he served for a bit in Paris in 1924, he was transferred to Port-au-Prince in 1926 and led the U.S. embassy there through 1929. He was then assigned to Havana, Cuba and later transferred to Ottawa, Canada before his retirement at an early age in 1932. Brother Gross passed away soon thereafter; any information about his all-too-soon passing should be forward to Omicron Secretary, Dave Komie. |
| Cassius Paul Fletcher ’14 Eminent U.S. Diplomat Consul General – Casablanca, Morocco ’47-49 Brother Fletcher’s service in the State Department lasted over twenty five years after time at West Point and duty in the Army from 1917-1919. Between WWI and entrance into the foreign service, he worked as an engineer on various projects, including highway construction overseas. He retired from the American Foreign Service in 1950. It was during WWII where Brother Fletcher’s career took him truly around the globe, being posted to Alexandria, Egypt, Basra, Iraq, and Gibralter before landing in Casablanca after the end of hostilities. When in Morocco, his home was the villa where Winston Churchill stayed during the North African Conference of 1943. In the October 1955 Omicron Arrow, Brother Fletcher reported a very interesting tale: Since my retirement in 1950 from the American Foreign Service, Mrs. Fletcher and I have been leading a simple and pleaseful life in sunny Southern California. On a motor trip to Washington D.C. last fall to visit a daughter, the wife of a navy officer, I had the opportunity to make a brief but interesting visit to the chapter house. Mrs. Fletcher and I flew TWA to Paris in December to spend Christmas with our daughter, her husband, and her son. Last week (early June) I flew to West Point, NY to attend the 40th reunion of my USMA class of 1915. At the end of the three-day affair the President [Eisenhower] very kindly invited me to accompany him from West Point to Washington on the COLUMBINE (Ike was USMA-1915). It was a unique experience and I am now thoroughly sold on Constellations as a means of transportation. |
