Patricia Gillingham van Delden (April 5, 1908 – died after 1970) was an American diplomat. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, she was active in the Dutch resistance to the Nazis. After the war, she served in various postings in Japan, Germany, and the Netherlands for the

United States Department of State The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs of other n ...

. She received the

Federal Woman's Award The Federal Woman's Award, also known as the Federal Women's Award, was given by the United States Civil Service Commission from 1961 until 1976. The Federal Woman's Award was established by Barbara Bates Gunderson in 1960, while she was serving on ...

in 1964.

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...

scholar

Giles Scott-Smith Giles Scott-Smith (born 1968, in High Wycombe, United Kingdom) is Dutch-British academic. He is a professor of transnational relations and new diplomatic history at Leiden University and serves as the dean of Leiden University College The Hague. ...

described her as "one of the most intriguing officials ever to work in the U. S. Embassy in

The Hague The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a city and municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's administrative centre and its seat of government, and while the official capital of ...

Early life and education

Patricia Louise (or Eloise) Gillingham was born in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

, California, the daughter of William Bartel Gillingham, a mining engineer, and Camillia Gillingham. Her parents divorced, and her mother's efforts to secure child support to raise Patricia made headlines. Gillingham graduated from Belmont High School and the

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in C ...

, and studied

bacteriology Bacteriology is the branch and specialty of biology that studies the morphology, ecology, genetics and biochemistry of bacteria as well as many other aspects related to them. This subdivision of microbiology involves the identification, classificat ...

in Munich, Zurich, and Vienna. She was a fluent German and Dutch speaker."Women Spies Part I: Patricia Van Denden"
''The Fontaine Archive'' (March 16, 2021).

Career

After her second husband was arrested by the Nazis in 1942, van Delden continued their work with the Dutch resistance, transmitting messages, forging documents, and smuggling maps under the code name "Sonneveer". For her efforts during World War II, she was awarded the

Order of Orange-Nassau The Order of Orange-Nassau ( nl, Orde van Oranje-Nassau, links=no) is a civil and military Dutch order of chivalry founded on 4 April 1892 by the queen regent, Emma of the Netherlands. The order is a chivalric order open to "everyone who has ...

. Immediately after the war, she toured in the United States, telling her story to raise funds for refugee relief in Holland. She joined the U. S. State Department in 1948, and led the

Amerika Haus The ''America House'' (Amerika Haus, plural: Amerika Häuser) is an institution developed following the end of the Second World War to provide an opportunity for German and Austrian citizens to learn more about American culture and politics, and e ...

program in Germany. In 1952, she was transferred to Japan to supervise 23 cultural centers. There, she created the Nagano Seminar, an academic gathering of Japanese scholars studying American literature.Hansen, Allen (February 8, 1988)
"Interview with G. Lewis Schmidt"
The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, Foreign Affairs Oral History Project. In 1957 she facilitated Helen Keller's tour in Scandinavia. In 1959 she was cultural affairs officer at the American embassy in

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

, and in 1960 she returned to The Hague. In 1964, van Delden was Deputy Public Affairs Officer,

U.S. Information Agency The United States Information Agency (USIA), which operated from 1953 to 1999, was a United States agency devoted to " public diplomacy". In 1999, prior to the reorganization of intelligence agencies by President George W. Bush, President Bill ...

(USIA) in

Bonn The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr r ...

, when she won the Federal Woman's Award. In 1966, van Delden was offered as an example of an "overpaid officer" in a Congressional hearing on overseas operations, because her salary as deputy was greater than that of her immediate superior. She was one of the highest-paid women in the USIA that year. "Pat often raised hackles among male officers, particularly her superiors, because she was smarter than most of them," recalled a colleague, G. Lewis Schmidt, in 1988, "and she was an absolute fountain of extremely good ideas."

Personal life

Patricia Gillingham married Robert M. Ziegler in 1929; they later divorced. She married her second husband, Dutch electrical engineer and patent attorney Louis Otto van Delden, in 1939. He was captured by the Nazis in 1942, and he died in a concentration camp in 1945. She married a third time, to Bart van der Laan, and retired in 1971 to the south of France.

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:van Delden, Patricia 1908 births Year of death missing American diplomats Belmont High School (Los Angeles) alumni University of Southern California alumni