Jean Farr Wollam of Carlsbad, who traced her ancestry to the Pilgrim ship Mayflower, became a U.S. diplomatic staffer in 1946 — the start of a career that let her witness modern history, including the Soviet blackade of Berlin.
Her memoir, “Around the world in 30 years,” written in her 90s, was added to the San Diego Public Library in 2011.
Wollam died Jan. 10, according to a death notice in The San Diego Union-Tribune. She was 98.
In her book, the notice said, she told of traveling to the Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, Switzerland, having an audience with Pope Pius XII, and getting a diplomatic promotion from President John F. Kennedy in the White House Rose Garden.
At the height of the Cold War, Wollam was posted at Berlin, helping staff the new American Mission to Germany under the command of Gen. Dwight Eisenhower.
“She was transferred to Frankfurt two years later during the Berlin Blockade in which the Soviet Union denied western allies access to the city” in 1948 and 1949.
A foreign service colleague, the late Jordan Thomas Rogers, told an oral history interview of then Jean Farr: “Put a halo around her head. No, make it a double!”
Her travels and assignments are detailed on prabook.org.
Born Oct. 5, 1917, in Holyoke, Massachusetts, Wollam was one of five children, and her mother’s family tree included Richard Warren, a passengers on the Mayflower, “making Jean a proud member of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants.”
After Germany, she was posted to Bogota, Colombia, and later Monterrey, Mexico. She became a sworn foreign service officer in Washington, where she worked four year, said the obituary.
Wollam studied seven languages and also worked in Saigon in the late 1950s; Phnom Penh, Cambodia; Beirut, Lebanon; Athens; and Lagos, Nigeria, “where she bought a brand new 1971 Ford Mustang – a car so prized by the Nigerians that one day a soldier followed her home and offered to buy it. She said she would need it for at least the next two years and he said, ‘I’ll wait,’” said her U-T obituary.
Her last post was Rome, where she was fluent in Italian. “In Sicily, she was part of a group that hiked Mt. Etna as it was erupting,” her notice said.
Six years after her 1976 retirement, she married former colleague Park Wollam.
She is survived by nine nieces and nephews — including Union-Tribune staff member Debbi Baker — and others from the Farr side.
Services were held at her home at Carlsbad, and she was to be interred at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery next to Park.
