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Monticello Area Historical Society

Farewell Good Friend

Memories of Royal Voegeli

Andrew J. Zafis, Esq., UW Law Class 1950, San Diego, CA.

 

It was a grimy part of the city with shabby, workingmen houses…not the Paris of travel brochures or of old black and white film classics…my friend Royal had asked me if I wanted to go with him while he dropped off a message at the Hungarian     Embassy.  In my naiveté', I had a mental image of an imposing building, (even if old) like the ones I had seen near Du Pont Circle in Washington DC…complete with brass plaques, gates, and guards.  But this was a shocker...no gates, no guards, no plaque, no signs.  Royal walked up, rang the bell, the door was opened at most two inches, and after a muffled introduction, he passed his letter on.  It was 1949, at the height of the Cold War, and Churchill's aptly named Iron Curtain apparently extended to the       diplomatic extensions of Stalin's satellite states.

Royal Voegeli (pronounced with a Swiss F sound) and I had met in law school and became good friends.  Of medium height, and always very trim, he was equally at ease in the rustic work clothes on his family's farm at Monticello, or in coat and tie for his more sophisticated roles in life.  An excellent speaker, whether in non-adversarial exchange of ideas, legal exchanges, on the speaking circuit, or as a mild voiced      raconteur, he was always a comfortable companion to be with.  Politically astute but of a non-partisan nature, he was very charismatic, and was elected the national    president of the National Students Association, as well as appointed by the university president as student representative on the Faculty Court of Appeals...  Our very       respected and reserved Dean Rundell had cautioned all of us about the danger of     missing classes.  Most of us returning vets of WWII honored this, so I was surprised to find that Royal would be gone 3, 4, 5 or even more days at a time without any  criticism by the Dean's office, presumably because of his student association activities.  These duties for example, allowed him great leeway not only to meet with prominent leaders of state (such as dinner with the President of France), but also to go where others could not, behind the Iron Curtain in working with student’s worldwide.  My growing suspicions that his duties went beyond scholastic camaraderie were      re-kindled that day in Paris and later confirmed when two years later we met in        Washington D.C. and he admitted he was full time CIA.

Paris was where we were to rendezvous after we had sailed from Quebec to Rotterdam with a shipload of Canadian & American student volunteers aboard the converted troop ship, Volendam, to join students from around the world to help rebuild Dutch roads.  He, and fellow classmates F. Ryan Duffy Jr, Galen Winter, and I volunteered to work as non-compensated waiters.  To avoid too much hassle and/or complaints, we bluffed about, claiming in phony Milwaukee Plat Deutsche that we didn't understand English.  This worked well until some smart-head started replying in