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Wilbert J. Le Melle (born November 11, 1931 and died January 11, 2003) was an American diplomat, author and academician. He served as an Ambassador of The United States to the Republic of Kenya and to the Republic of Seychelles from 1977 to 1980. After his service as Ambassador, he also served as Vice Chancellor for International Affairs of the State University of New York, President of Mercy College and President of the Phelps Stokes Fund. Le Melle served in a large number of organizations founded on public policy, political lobbying and international relations, with a special focus on education and on Africa. Early life[edit] Wilbert Le Melle was born in New Iberia, Lousiana and was one of eight children born to Therese and Eloi LeMelle. After the seventh grade and at twelve years old, he left New Iberia to study for the catholic priesthood at St. Augustine Seminary in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. Although he decided to not join the priesthood, Le Melle received a B.A. in medieval history and an M.A. in philosophy, with a concentration in legal philosophy from Notre Dame Seminary.

Early career[edit] After leaving the seminary, Le Melle embarked on an acedemic career by accepting a position as an assisstant professor of history and philosophy at Grambling State University. After one year, he was drafted into the Army and served two years at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Le Melle returned to Grambling to teach for an additional two years before deciding to pursue a doctorate degree. In 1961-62 he was a teaching fellow in the department of international relations at the University of Denver, and from 1962 to 1964 he was on the correspondence faculty in political science at the University of Minnesota. At the University of Denver, he was a protegee of Josef Korbel, the founding Dean of its Graduate School of International Studies. Josef Kobel was the father of Madeline Albright, the country’s first woman to be appointed Secretary of State. Condolessa Rice, the second woman so appointed, was a later graduate of the same program. With his Ph.D. in political science/international relations in tow, he accepted a position at Boston University in 1963 as an assistant professor and research associate in the African Studies Program of BU’s Department of Government. After two years, he left BU and accepted a position in New York City at the Ford Foundation under McGeorge Bundy, former senior advisor to President John F. Kennedy, as a program officer responsible for West Africa. At the time, many countries in Africa had newly formed govrnements post European colonialism. At the Ford Foundation, Le Melle worked very closely with the new governments on their economic development programs. This covered population, agricultural development, staff development, higher education, university development, and a whole range of training and professional development activities. In 1970, he was asked to lead Ford Foundation’s development program first in East and Southern Africa and then in Northern Africa and the Middle East. These programs were headquatered, respectively, in Nairobi, Kenya and then in Tunis, Tunisia where Le Melle lived with his family directing these programs for a period totalling six years.

After his return to the Ford Foundation headquarters in New York in November 1976, he became the Deputy Director of the Middle East and Africa Program.

Ambassador to the Republic of Kenya and to the Republic of the Seychelles [edit]

[photo of Le Melle with Carter]

In 1977, President Jimmy Carter appointed Le Melle to serve as Ambassador to the Republic of Kenya and concurrently to the Republic of the Seychelles. Le Melle already had forged a relationship with both President Jomo Kenyatta and Vice President Danilel arap Moi during his time in Kenya with the Ford Foundation. Kenya was, and the republic considered itself, a friend of the United States during the years of President Kenyatta. Kenya had gained its independence from the British in 1960 and older Kenyans expressed to him their admiration for the United States and particularly their gratitude for the special assistance the United States had provided for Kenya from the very beginning of it’s post colonial period. The so-called "Kenya airlift," was the effort to bring several plane loads of young Kenyans to study in the United States in order to move as fast as possible with the development of administrative personnel and begin to develop the Kenyan leadership, is still regarded in the minds of older Kenyans as a singular gesture if generosity in the relationship between the United States and Kenya. Barack Obama, Sr. had been one of these young Kenayans who were brought to the United States for study and it was there that he met and married Stanley Ann Dunham, mother of the 44th president, Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. On the policy side, according to Le Melle, Kenya was trying very hard to understand and to embrace the spirit and basic principles of governance that have characterized the philosophy of democratic government in the United States. During the Kenyatta period, Le Melle said, there was a kind of clash of two systems. On the one hand, Kenyatta was a chief. He was an Mzee, an elder, a leader, an absolutist as it were. On the other hand, the U.S. was looking for openness, for transparency, and for participatory government. There was this constant effort of trying to get both sides to understand the values and attitudes of their side. “The result was that we sought to constantly remind the government of Kenya that we believed in participatory democracy, that every man and woman should have the vote, that government was accountable to the governed, that there should be an independent judiciary, that the military should be responsive to the civilian government, that politicians should be responsible to the people, and that military dictatorship was not a form of government we felt was in the best interests of the people of a modern state.” Le Melle worked closely with President Jomo Kenyatta, the first president of Kenya post independence from British colonial rule, and his government. When he died in August 1978, the American deligation to the funeral were received by Le Melle and his family at their home. This delegation included notable Americans led by Supreme Court JusticeThurgood Marshall, such as, Ambassador Andrew Young, Coretta Scott King, Mohammed Ali and Congressman Charles Diggs.

Post-ambassador career[edit] Ambassador Le Melle left his post Nairobi in1980 and returned to the United States. He served as Vice Chancellor for International Affairs of the State University of New York until 1985 when he became the president of Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, New York. In1990, he began his appointment as president of the Phelps-Stokes Fund which he held until his health began to fail. During his post-ambassador career, Le Melle served on several boards, including, the Public Broadcast Service, Inc, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Borden, Inc. He had also been a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Personal life and family[edit] Le Melle had four children with his wife, the former Yvonne Tauriac, who is a biologist and received her M.A. from the University of Denver and her PhD in Busniess Administration from Fordham University. All four of their children, Patrice, Wilbert, Jr., Gerald and Edward, are lawyers practicing in the New York City or Washington D.C. area. Books and Articles[edit] • The Black College: A Strategy for Relevancy with Tilden J. Le Melle.(February 1969); • The OAU and Superpower Intervention in Africa. Africa Today Vol. 35, No. 3/4, (October 1988);

Places named after Ambassador Le Melle[edit] In 1999, Frere Street in New Iberia, Lousiana was renamed to honor Le Melle.[32]

References[edit] • ^ Jump up to: 
a b c d e f DeRoche, Andrew (2003). Andrew Young: Civil Rights Ambassador. ISBN 0-8420-2956-7. • Jump up 
^ "Charles Templeton memoir". Templetons.com. Retrieved 2014-01-23. Jump up 
^ "With Andrew Young in 1968". Los Angeles Times. December 21, 2012. Retrieved 2012-12-22. The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project, AMBASSADOR WILBERT LEMELLE, Interviewed by: Richard Jackson Initial interview date: December 3, 1998, Copyright 2000 ADST