Julie (Rethmeier) Moyes, 1971 graduate of Apollo High School, was in the first graduating class from the new school. It was a stellar year. Opportunities were plentiful. Because new doors were opened, her senior year gave her a zest for adventure that continued the rest of her life. She’s traveled the world, met royalty, presidents, diplomats, politicians and even a pope!
Moyes recalls writing three papers when she was a freshman at Apollo about what careers she’d be interested in as an adult. She wrote about being a newspaper reporter, working in advertising and also in foreign affairs.
So, when the opportunity arose for her to join the Apollo school newspaper, the yearbook and student government, she jumped at the chance.
“Everything was new and cool at Apollo. … It really gave me the opportunity to get more involved in school,” says Moyes. “You know, Tech was so huge and already had an infrastructure of tradition and customs. It was hard for younger students to break into that. So, a new school really gave me the opportunity to get into things I really liked. I really like to write. … It paved the way forward in my life.”
Following graduation, Moyes attended the University of Minnesota and majored in journalism because she got the “bug” working on Apollo’s newspaper. Three of her summers were spent working at the St. Cloud Times. One of her first stories was on Vietnamese immigration. Her story focused on a new family moving to the area. She was flattered when the article was reprinted during the Times’s 50th anniversary. During her senior year at the university, she studied abroad in London. Moyes found herself bitten by a different kind of bug – the travel bug.
Making a transition from journalism to marketing, Moyes stayed in Minnesota after college graduation. She worked in Dayton’s broadcast advertising department in its Minneapolis downtown store.
“It was so magical in those days,” she recalls. “It was really in the glory days. … It was really exciting. … But I felt I wasn’t in the right place. I really wanted to do something different. Trying to convince people to buy something they really didn’t need wasn’t feeding my soul. … There was just something missing.”
In 1984, Moyes applied to the United States Foreign Service. Falling back on the research she’d done as a freshman in high school, she took the leap from advertising to government. Her first tour assignment was as a foreign service specialist in Morocco.
“It was really exotic,” remembers Moyes. “I got to do really cool things. The ambassador would take me to all kinds of things. Mohamed Ali was visiting … There was a spread of a feast inside a tent, and it made me realize that there are opportunities in the Foreign Service that I couldn’t get anywhere else.”
After two years in Morocco, she was reassigned to the Holy See (Vatican). It was an extremely busy assignment. She found herself meeting many congressmen, senators, cabinet members and President Ronald Reagan. She even met Pope John Paul II whom she recalls had a twinkle in his eye, especially when he sidestepped protocols and pretenses. Even more charismatic, remembers Moyes, was Mother Theresa. She radiated positive energy.
By 1988, Moyes became a foreign service officer, a full-fledged diplomat. She was assigned to Edinburgh, Scotland shortly after the Pan American flight 103 Lockerbie bombing where 243 passengers, 16 flight crew and 11 people from Lockerbie, Scotland perished.
Her first year was spent itemizing and cataloging remnants from the plane that had been collected over a 100-mile radius.
“It just broke your heart,” remembers Moyes. “People had Christmas presents for their families. There were so many teddy bears. I [still] get emotional thinking about it. … It was just tragic.”
Unique to the United States, foreign affairs is designed to protect, advocate and assist Americans while traveling abroad. The most devastating part of the job was to contact the next of kin when someone passed while traveling.
“The worst thing I had to do in my job was to call someone in the United States and say, ‘I’m sorry. Your son died …,'” says Moyes. “It just stays with you.”
Despite the trauma and tragedy of the Lockerbie event, Moyes felt she was doing something good in her role as a foreign service officer.
The one exceptional thing that came out from her tour in Edinburgh was her husband, whom she met while in Scotland. The the pair have traveled the world together since for 30 years.
Moyes went on to Santa Domingo, Dominican Republic and London, England. She met future presidents and famous artists. In 1992, the Berlin Wall came down. Completely and newly independent countries emerged with needs of embassies and consulates. Edinburgh was set to close, but Congress saved the office and Moyes was reassigned to Scotland as the Consul General. It was her best job ever!
She wined and dined with royalty, met future prime ministers and opened a new American-owned factory.
“It was so cool,” says Moyes. “But at the same time, Scotland was fighting for independence from the rest of the UK [United Kingdom]. … So while I was there, I did a lot of political reporting.”
After her second tour in Scotland, Moyes was assigned to Washington, D.C. She worked with other agencies to allow travel of diplomats that may have been questionable, but crucial to relations.
“You’re not necessarily the most important person,” says Moyes, “or the richest person in the room. But you are seeing history. … It was just fascinating. … The United States really has convening power … where other countries do not.”
When the United States Information Agency merged with the State Department, Moyes became a public diplomacy officer.
“That was just like I was home,” smiles Moyes. “It was because I had a degree in journalism … it was back to what I really liked to do, dealing with the press and also doing the cultural affairs programs.”
So, Moyes was assigned to The Hague as a press officer.
President George W. Bush was visiting a military cemetery in the Netherlands for a State visit and Moyes wrote the building blocks for his speech.
“It was a very special place because the U.S. actually liberated the southern part of the Netherlands in World War II. A lot of American [soldiers] stayed with families in the area. There was a very close association between soldiers buried in this cemetery and Dutch people living in that region.”
Moyes received the thrill of her life when President Bush gave the speech.
“I was really stunned, standing in the back of the cemetery, and I was with the journalists and I’m thinking, ‘He’s reading my speech! The President of the United States is reading my speech!'”
It is one of the highlights of her career.
She left The Hague and moved to New York City where she became more involved with cultural affairs. She assisted with people coming to the United States for weeks at a time in a cultural exchange program. It became her passion and favorite part of foreign affairs and diplomacy.
In a rare move, Moyes was reassigned to The Hague. It was unusual for someone to be reassigned to a location twice (She’d already had that happen in Scotland). While in The Hague, she spent part of her tenure as Deputy Chief of Mission and Acting Ambassador when her superior was away.
When her second tour of The Hague ended, Moyes and her husband moved to Arlington, Virginia where she taught for three years about the cultural affairs program to young diplomats. She retired in 2016.
However, Moyes’ sense of adventure lives on. She looks back on her career with satisfaction and contentment, and she continues to be passionate about the Foreign Service. Today she mentors foreign services officers and students who are interested in joining the service. She feels the cultural programs are such a vital way to bring people together.
Reflecting back on her time in District 742 where it all began, Moyes says, “So, listen to your students when they write their career papers! … I ended up doing all three!”
Who knows? This year there may be another young 742 student who will meet future presidents, diplomats and politicians.
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