Orison Rudolph Aggrey

Orison Rudolph Aggrey (July 24, 1926 April 6, 2016) was an American diplomat who served as the United States Ambassador to Senegal, Gambia, and Romania.

O. Rudolph Aggrey
United States Ambassador to Romania
In office
November 22, 1977  July 11, 1981
PresidentJimmy Carter
Ronald Reagan
Preceded byHarry George Barnes Jr.
Succeeded byDavid B. Funderburk
United States Ambassador to Senegal
In office
January 17, 1974  July 10, 1977
PresidentRichard Nixon
Gerald Ford
Jimmy Carter
Preceded byGilbert Edward Clark
Succeeded byHerman Jay Cohen
United States Ambassador to The Gambia
In office
January 17, 1974  July 10, 1977
PresidentRichard Nixon
Gerald Ford
Jimmy Carter
Preceded byGilbert Edward Clark
Succeeded byHerman Jay Cohen
Personal details
Born
Orison Rudolph Aggrey

(1926-07-24)July 24, 1926
Salisbury, North Carolina, U.S.
DiedApril 6, 2016(2016-04-06) (aged 89)
Alexandria, Virginia, U.S.
SpouseFrançoise Christiane Fratacci
Children1
Alma materHampton University
Syracuse University

Aggrey was born in 1926 in Salisbury, North Carolina as the youngest of four children to Dr. James Emman Kwegyir Aggrey, an immigrant from the Gold Coast and later the co-Founder of Achimota School, and Rosebud Aggrey (née Douglass). He died in April 2016 at the age of 89.[1]

He graduated in 1946 from Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) and received his master's degree from Syracuse University in 1948.

In 1977, President Jimmy Carter nominated Aggrey to be Ambassador Extraordinary and plenipotentiary of the U.S. to Romania. In Bucharest, he met Nobel Prize winning author Saul Bellow in December 1978 who asked for assistance in dealing with Romanian red-tape his Romanian-born wife, Alexandra Bellow, was experiencing while visiting her very ill mother in a Romanian hospital. Bellow portrayed Aggrey in chapter four of his novel The Dean's December, published in 1982, describing the ambassador as "discreet, soft-spoken, almost gentle, mysteriously earnest, handsome black man" (p. 58).

References

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