Happy birthday, Walter . . . you old curmudgeon.

He would have been 110 years old today; and I can’t even begin to imagine how cantankerous he would have become by now. But I’d give anything to have him back here, fixing the things that have gone wrong with the world since he left it in 1989.

I didn’t know him in his earlier years, of course — the learning period at the University of Virginia and Yale University Law School; the years of his service in the OSS during World War II; his time in the State Department where he was the chief legal draftsman of both the Marshall Plan and the NATO Treaty; or when he worked with Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger to reopen U.S. relations with China.

What I remember are those ten years of working with him — from 1979 to 1989 — when he was senior partner of the Washington-based international law firm of Surrey & Morse, advising his corporate clients on the fine art of doing business in numerous countries throughout the world.

I remember the calls from the State Department seeking his advice on a variety of delicate issues.

I remember his unsolicited advice to the Kremlin in 1983, via a contact in the Soviet Embassy in Washington, when Korean Airlines Flight 007 was shot down by Soviet fighter jets, with the newest member of our firm onboard.

I recall the meetings in our offices with Soviet officials, delegations from Beijing, and representatives of the widow of the last Shah of Iran.

And how could I ever forget our colossal fights when he was in one of his infrequent, but notorious, bad moods — usually because he wasn’t feeling well but refused to stay at home?

But most of all I remember his wicked sense of humor, his generosity, and his limitless capacity for drawing people to him and caring for them as though they were his own family . . . myself included.

For his sake, I’m glad he’s not around to see what has happened to our country — in fact, to the entire world — in his absence. But selfishly, how I wish he were here . . . running me ragged with his boundless energy and enthusiasm; sitting me down to talk things out when he sensed that I had a personal problem; and affectionately calling me “Bitch” on those rare occasions when I might verbally get the better of him.

And I remember, with renewed pain, the feeling that part of me had also died when I got the call from his wife that dreadful day in January of ‘89.

So, happy 110th, Walter. Thanks for giving me a decade of the most interesting, most frustrating, most educational, most exhausting, and most fun-filled years of my life.

I miss you every day.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
7/24/25