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Richard B. Parker
If it had not been for a twist or two of fate, Ambassador Richard Parker, a retired U.S. foreign service officer who is now Editor of The Middle East Journal, might instead be the current Editor of The Middle West Journal of Industrial Chemicals, after having retired from a successful career as a senior executive at duPont.
For the fact is that Ambassador Parker's early goal in life was to become a chemical engineer. It was while he was studying to be one at Kansas State University - known those days as Kansas State College of Agriculture and Applied Mechanics - that fate stepped in for the first time.
"I had to take German as a pre-requisite for chemical engineering," he says, "and it was clear that German came much easier to me than to anyone else in the class. I discovered a gift for languages that I hadn't realized I had." It got him thinking about whether engineering was the thing he ought to be doing.
The Seeds of War
Then fate nudged him once again - strongly, this time - when World War II interrupted his studies and he went overseas as an infantry officer. Captured by the Germans, he was repatriated at the end of the war via Odessa, the Turkish Straits, Port Said and Naples. That did it.
"I...