The demise of the Soviet Union starts completely new chapters for Monica and Keith.

For Monica: As co-president of the Stanford Club of Washington DC she initiates a series of Embassy receptions. These include: The Russian Embassy; the Embassy of Ukraine; The Czech Embassy; the Finnish embassy and the Swiss Embassy. Monica didn’t run all of these but advised on them. By far the reception generating the most interest was the one she organized together with Sergey, the assistant to the Russian Ambassador, at the Russian Embassy on 16^th St. in Washington DC. Since the start of the cold war, this embassy had not been open to the American public. Monica worked with the assistant to the Russian Ambassador and set up a reception for 200 people. Instantly this became the hot ticket item in town as many wanted to attend. At the end of the evening when most guests had gone, a never-before photo op occurred: The Russian Ambassador to the US and the head of the FBI stood in front of a Christmas tree and shook hands as their wives looked on. I said to Monica, “Remember this scene.” Later, on a Sunday afternoon, we had Sergey, the assistant to the Russian Ambassador and his wife and small daughter over to our home for lunch. Monica offered artichokes among other things. The daughter looked to her father for help with the artichoke which she had never seen before. Artichokes were pretty certainly a new experience for him too so he said, “Just watch what Mrs. Mulrooney does and do exactly the same thing.”

For Keith: The dissolution of the Soviet Union led to a number of East Block assignments over the next twelve years beginning with Moldova in 1993-94. After this republic won its independence the leadership of the City of Orhei with one exception, went to non-communists. At the invitation of Mayor Vladimir Popushoi of the City of Orhei, the U.S. State Department requested the United States Information Agency to provide to provide a technical assistance advisor. USIA in turn asked the National Academy of Public Administration to nominate a candidate to provide general advice on the reform of local government in Moldova. I submitted my report in February 1994. Meanwhile Monica presented 8 workshops around the country to Moldovan teachers of English for the Peace Corps. Following the presentation of my recommendations to the Mayor and other leaders of Orhei, Monica and I gave a thank you and farewell dinner dance for about 30 people of Orhei to express our appreciation for their warm hospitality and generosity.* Maryann Murray, in-country Peace Corps Director and staff attended. The next day I presented my report to U.S. Ambassador Mary Pendleton at a dinner at Ms. Murray’s home in the capital, Chisinau.

An interesting weekend side trip from Moldova was to Odessa, Ukraine. The route there and back took us through the breakaway Moldovan province of Transnistria where Russian troops were and are still stationed. The border guards behind camouflage netting were only interested if we had any American cigarettes. (This giving of a party or providing dinners at our Alexandria home became a pattern for most of my work in the East Block.)

On our way back to the US, we visited some of Monica’s relatives in Bonn, Germany. A third-cousin, Rudi, had been a prisoner of the Russians on the Eastern Front. His brother, Carlo, later became a federal judge. He told us some of the problems of integrating East Germany with the West.

The next assignment was a training-of-trainers type program in human resources management in Bulgaria. A Bulgarian/ American partnership presented a Human Resources Management Workshop aimed at Mayors, Deputy Mayors, Municipal Secretaries and Department Heads. I was part of the three member US team. In addition to training our trainers, we had to recruit our students in making calls on Mayors around the country. All this culminated in a workshop in the Black Sea coast resort of Albena December 2-6, 1996. Back at our hotel in Sofia, I gave a thank you party for the trainers and staff. And I wrote a skit in which the Bulgarian trainers played all the parts. The first scene was in Trimontium in 72 BC.

For several assignments the work was done in the US. Twice I took groups of Romanian local government officials on visits to local governments of the Mid-Atlantic States. These would be tailored to what the officials had requested before leaving Romania. For instance, one woman vice mayor had requested a visit to a battered women’s shelter. Through an Alexandria attorney I was able to arrange such a visit. A group of officials were interested in a waste to energy plant. They got to see such a plant jointly operated by Arlington County and the City of Alexandria, Virginia. In Savannah Georgia they wanted to see the emergency operating rooms of the city hospital. Their last stop was a party at the home of Alan and Sandi Beals.

One time I was asked to speak with five Russian local government officials from the very far eastern part of Russia in Washington, DC. They seemed pretty discouraged but when Monica and I had them over for a barbeque that night they really perked up and enjoyed husking corn.

Another Russian group was a small van load of highway engineers. I escorted them to the Federal Highway Administration’s Turner-Fairbanks Highway Research Center in Northern Virginia. Afterward I took them to see a large Giant food market (they were only interested in buying cigarettes) and a shopping mall at Pentagon City. There the one woman engineer in the group was almost overcome by the range of choices in a Macy’s store.

I took a group of Romanian civil defense officials to the National Fire Academy in Emmitsburg, MD, the Maryland state emergency operations center and the Washington DC emergency operation center.

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