CDR. Thomas Donlon
U.S. Coast Guard – Lawyer/Military Judge
U.S. Coast Guard Liaison to the U.S. Ambassador
to the United Nations, New York City
1973-1996
U.S. Coast Guard – Lawyer/Military Judge
U.S. Coast Guard Liaison to the U.S. Ambassador
to the United Nations, New York City
1973-1996
Thomas Donlon was born in Stratford, Connecticut in 1951. Tom graduated from the local Catholic High School, Fairfield Prep in 1969 and headed off to the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut. Tom comes from a family with a strong history of serving in the military. For as long as he could remember he wanted to be in the Coast Guard. “I wanted to be in a service that had something to do other than just practicing for war or fighting a war. The Coast Guard has lots to do when nobody’s fighting”.
Tom entered the Coast Guard Academy in 1969 just as the United States began developing a strategy to exit the war in Vietnam. In 1973, five months before Tom graduated, the U.S. POW’s were returned to the United States and soon the U.S. service branches would be returning to peacetime status.
Tom graduated near the top of his class at the Academy and was able to choose where he would serve his first billet. Tom selected the Coast Guard Cutter Spar. USCGC Spar was a 180-foot seagoing buoy tender, home-ported in Portland, Maine. The summer before Tom had spent some time as a cadet on a buoy tender and saw the officer compliment on the vessel was small and as a consequence “you got to do a lot”.
A Buoy Tenders’ primary mission is to position, maintain, repair and replace navigational aids and buoys. Tom found these vessels were a great place to learn ship handling and, more important, how to be an officer. The crew would perform their work from dawn to dusk. Tom recalled working in the waters north of Portland, Maine where they would try to dock at a port or tie up to something stable every evening to avoid having to man an anchor watch. This was a two-year assignment. In the first year Tom was the junior officer and in the second year he moved up to Operations Officer, the number three in command.
“It was a real great opportunity. I learned a great deal, but I really had an interest in the law”. Tom had taken the mandatory law course for all cadets while he was at the Academy. “All Coast Guard officers are, by statute, officers of the Customs. You can make arrests on the high seas and in the special maritime jurisdictions in the United States”. Tom pointed out that the Coast Guard had been involved in law enforcement since its founding by Alexander Hamilton to stop smuggling, which became a major mission again in Prohibition. Over Tom’s years, the Coast Guard has become more active in fisheries enforcement, boardings and then drug and migrant interdiction.
Tom applied to law school as part of a new pilot program by the Coast Guard. Previously an officer would have to do two tours of duty before they could apply to law school, meaning the wait was four or five years. The pilot program allowed officers go directly to law school after their first tour. Tom applied to the University of Michigan and was accepted.
At the time, Tom was dating Rosalie LaMotta, his high school sweetheart. The couple had met when Tom was performing in the theater club at Fairfield Prep, an all-boys school. When young ladies were needed to fill the female parts in productions, the casting call went to Rosalie’s local all-girls Catholic high school, Notre Dame. Rather than continue a long-distance relationship the couple married and headed off to the University of Michigan in the fall of 1975. Tom really enjoyed law school as well as the big-time college football program. A big step up from the football played at the Coast Guard Academy.
While Tom was attending the University of Michigan, Rosalie enrolled at the University of Toledo Law School. When Tom graduated, his first tour of duty in a legal capacity would be at Governors Island in New York City. Rosalie still had a year remaining in law school and it was very difficult to transfer in your senior year. Fortunately, the Dean of the Toledo Law school was a Vietnam Veteran, and he helped Rosalie enroll at New York Law School) for her senior year and get her degree from Toledo.
Between 1978 and 1981 Tom was assigned to the Coast Guard Legal Office on Governors Island There were 3,000 people who lived and worked on Governors Island and nearly 2,000 more civilians who worked on the island. The island is 2 miles in circumference and is located between the Battery in lower Manhattan and Buttermilk Channel near Brooklyn. “The only way off the island was a ferry”, but you couldn’t beat the proximity to New York City. For the next three years Tom enjoyed his work, and he and Rosalie spent their free time taking advantage of all that Manhattan had to offer.
Tom’s legal work included “basically everything”. Military justice, environmental protection work, fisheries enforcement and drug enforcement. “At that time, we advised all of the Coast Guard units from Connecticut to Delaware” including the Hudson River. One of the more memorable cases Tom recalled was when he received a call at 4:17am on a Sunday morning from the Commanding Officer of the Coast Guard unit in Atlantic City. A fisherman was operating more than three miles off the coast of Atlantic City and pulled up a dead body in his fishing net. He dutifully delivered the body to the Coast Guard station and now the CO wanted to know how to dispose of the body. Tom helped him interact with the county coroner and resolve the matter.
On another occasion the brother of a Coast Guardsman was using his brother’s base housing and was caught selling between 10 and 20 pounds of marijuana. Tom contacted a U.S. Attorney in the office of the Southern District of New York, relayed the situation and requested to bring the seller to the office to press federal charges. Tom was told that office didn’t prosecute cases with less than 500 pounds of marijuana.
Tom’s next tour was the Coast Guard office in Honolulu, Hawaii. Fisheries enforcement was large area of practice because their area of operation extended to Guam, Saipan and American Samoa, Kure Island and the Island of Wake. These were particularly remote areas and difficult to travel to. Tom’s tour was from ’81 to ’83 which was the time women were entering the Coast Guard. “Someone had the idea to send one woman to join the 11 men on Kure Island for a 12-month tour. No leave and no vacation because it was so isolated. The first three women did not finish their one-year tour”. Tom was also involved with military law and from time-to-time prosecuted people assigned to Coast Guard units at court-martials. “I was in lots of little places across the Pacific Ocean”.
Tom and Rosalie took advantage of their vacation time and were able to visit, , New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, mainland China, and the Philippines. “The opportunities were really great”.
At the end of this tour in 1983 Tom had 10 years in the Coast Guard and he was focused on advancing his career. At Tom’s rank, the next assignment would hopefully be to serve as the XO of a shore command since sea duty was too long in the past. The Coast Guard saw things differently and Tom was sent to Coast Guard Headquarters in Washington, DC. ‘Washington, DC is a great magnet. It sucks everyone in at some time in your career if you are a career officer or career enlisted person”.
In 1983 Tom began his tour in an office at Trans(“Trash’) Point where the Coast Guard had their headquarters. Tom was the Senior Government Appellate Counsel where he was responsible for all Coast Guard court-martials being appealed. Tom’s boss was a member of a Joint Service Military Justice Committee. Tom was a member of the working group that supported that committee by writing updates to the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Manual for Court Martials.
In 1985 John Walker, a retired Navy officer, was arrested for selling some of the Navy’s most closely guarded secrets to the Soviet Union. Included in the information he turned over to the Soviets were the codes to track U.S. submarines and the protocol the Americans would follow in the event of a nuclear attack. Over 17 years he was paid $1 million before his arrest in 1985. The Secretary of the Navy wanted him court-martialed and given the death sentence for spying. After further research, under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, spying was punishable by death only if committed during a time of war. “These people couldn’t be tried for spying”. Espionage is a federal crime but is not eligible for a court martial proceeding because it is a capital crime.
Seeing the flaw in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the Secretary of the Navy instructed the working group to amend the Code, so Espionage was classified as a capital crime subject to court martial proceedings. This showed “that the government can work when someone really puts their mind to it…a week later we had a meeting of the working group and produced an amendment to the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Manual for Court Martials…in a month we changed the law”.
In his three years in this position Tom saw a lot. He spent a significant amount of time on urinalysis and sexual harassment cases. “My boss used to say we did everything from sex to drugs and everything in between.
Just before Tom’s Headquarters’ tour came to a close in 1987 he assisted in the first case the U.S. military directly appealed to the Supreme Court (United States v. Solario). The case dealt with restrictions placed on prosecuting court martials for crimes not committed on a military base. This was very problematic for the Coast Guard because they have very few of the Guardsman stationed on a base. This was a sexual abuse case committed by one Coast Guardsman against the daughters of another Coast Guardsman. Both Guardsmen worked in the same building. The Coast Guard brought a court-martial proceeding, but the judge ruled the Guardsman could not be court martialed because the crime was not committed on a military base. Tom appealed the case to the Coast Guard Court of Military Review and won. Tom also argued the appeal in front of the U.S. Court of Military Appeals and won. The convicted Guardsman appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Tom was part of the Solicitor General’s team and got to attend the argument before the Supreme Court. “The Justices all stand behind the curtain and then the curtain pops open and all nine of them step out to their chairs together. It’s very dramatic”. The Supreme Court upheld the conviction.
When his Headquarters’ tour of duty came to a close Tom did a homesteading tour. Homesteading is where you do not change your physical residence, but you are technically transferred to a new position. This happens when a Coast Guardsman likes where they are living and would like to extend their stay in that area. “I went on loan to the Department of Justice Admiralty and Shipping Office. I did civil admiralty trials for the Department of Justice. I did 12 trials in 24 months…most people in my firm will do 12 trials in 20 years”.
Tom’s office was in Washington, DC but he tried cases anywhere and everywhere up and down the Mississippi River, Florida, Virginia, and Louisiana to name a few jurisdictions. “I spent a year of my life one week in Parkersburg”, West Virginia. Parkersburg is on the Ohio River and there is a significant volume of cargo moving down the river from Pittsburgh. Tom was always on the road for a trial, and he learned he didn’t want to be a trial lawyer and away from home so frequently. “The closest case I tried was in Norfolk, Virginia”.
Tom talked about flotillas moving down the Mississippi as large as 60 barges. They would be four to six barges wide by 10 barges deep. Navigation of such a large object is very difficult. From time-to-time these flotillas would hit bridges, have barges sink and the result was closure of the river. This would result in commercial insurance claims and claims that the accident was the fault of the Coast Guard.
The Coast Guard is responsible for maintaining the navigational aids in U.S. waterways. These aids to navigation in the rivers marked where the water was safe for passage. However, the areas for safe passage could change based on storm surge, height of the river, the current, weather, flooding or debris. The rivers are very unlike the harbors and coastline in and around New England where the buoys often mark large rocks, which never move. The Coast Guard has experienced crews assigned along the length of the river to manage the buoys but, “It’s very difficult to keep track of where everything is because they don’t assign a specific location” along the river. Tom recalled one case in Greenville, Mississippi where a string of barges hit a bridge crossing over the river and the barges sunk.
In 1989 Tom returned to the Coast Guard Academy to teach law. “I taught everything-law”. Military law, maritime and law enforcement, constitutional law, admiralty and national law. In his third year he was named Chief of the Law Section. Tom also returned to his theatrical roots and was an Assistant to the Director of Musical Activities. In 1993 Tom was eligible for retirement and he was looking at the possible options for his next step in the Coast Guard. “My career path had really shrunk down”. Thinking he had limited options, he received a call from Personnel asking if he would consider being the Coast Guard Liaison to the United Nations. Tom knew nothing about the position and talked to the Commander currently in the position. With few other prospects and a weak civilian legal market at the time, Tom thought, why not.
In 1962 the U.S. Senator from Rhode Island, Clairborne Pell, and a former Guardsman (and Foreign Service Officer), decided it was important for the Coast Guard to have an office at the United Nations. He used his influence on the Foreign Relations Committee to make that happen. Tom would be stepping into this role.
Taking this position could require he be a ‘geographic bachelor’. He could live on Governors Island during the week and come home to his family in the New London area on the weekend. He discussed this with his family His older daughter was adamantly opposed, and she suggested the family relocate. The Donlon family benefitted immensely from the wisdom of the young lady. They moved into a newly renovated Victorian home in Nolan Park on Governors Island. These very large Victorian homes built just after the Civil War were divided into duplexes. The Donlon’s shared their house with the Executive Officer of the base. The house was divided down the middle and the Dolan’s had 6,000 square feet, four fireplaces and a front porch facing a beautiful park. From the back of the house, they could see the water toward Brooklyn.
In July of ’93 Tom reported to work and found that he would be working for Madeline Albright, the newly appointed U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations. “The best person I have ever worked for in my entire life. Very demanding, but, as long as you did your job, and did it well, she was great”.
“It was a very exciting time at the UN because the USSR had split up. We were working with the Russian Federation. Putin and his gang weren’t in charge yet”. Tom spent a lot of time working with Sergey Lavrov, the Permanent Representative of Russia (now the Foreign Minister under Putin). “Not a nice individual, but a hell of a diplomat and a hell of a representative for his country”.
Tom did not have a portfolio of countries when he arrived, but he immediately picked up Somalia, after the Blackhawk down incident. The person handling Somalia was assigned as a senior advisor to The Special Envoy to Somalia in Mogadishu and Tom stepped into his role, which included several other African Nations. “When discussions about Somalia came up, I’d go to working group meetings and Security Council meetings”. Tom would take notes and prepare talking points for Ambassador Albright. Tom recalled on one occasion attending a meeting between Ms. Albright and Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Secretary General of the UN at that time. The Secretary General asked a question about one of the talking points Tom had given to Ms. Albright. She said, ‘Commander Donlon is our point person on Somalia. He can answer your question’. “It was tremendously uplifting and empowering at the same time”.
On another occasion the officer responsible for Rwanda and Central Africa, who was an Orthodox Jew, had to be home by sundown on Friday. There was a Security Council meeting about removing Belgian troops from Rwanda that the officer could not attend and Tom stepped in and became the responsible Officer. Tom then went on to add Burundi and “the whole middle strip of Africa” to his portfolio.
It was a very exciting time for his family because Tom had an extensive entertainment budget. “You would buy food, cook and have people over, cheaper than taking one diplomat to lunch. We had the Russian legal advisor, the German legal advisor and the Canadian legal advisor” to name a few of Tom and Rosalie’s dinner guests. Those dinners included many interesting conversations. After a very exciting and interesting position, Tom retired in 1996.
After retiring from the Coast Guard Tom joined a small law firm in lower Manhattan that handled Admiralty cases, among other topics. He also got involved with bankruptcy when one of his partners found he could not get along with the bankruptcy judge After four years of a very long commute from Stamford, Connecticut to lower Manhattan he joined Robinson & Cole in Stamford, Connecticut in 2000. Tom is Senior Counsel in the Business Litigation Group where he focuses on complex trial and appellate issues.
Thank you, Tom, for all of the sacrifices you and your family have made so you could keep the Coast Guard on an even keel from a legal standpoint. We thank you for all of your hard work and diligence at the United Nations and helping Ambassador Albright advance the interests of the United States. Your career is proof that you never know where life will lead you.
Tom entered the Coast Guard Academy in 1969 just as the United States began developing a strategy to exit the war in Vietnam. In 1973, five months before Tom graduated, the U.S. POW’s were returned to the United States and soon the U.S. service branches would be returning to peacetime status.
Tom graduated near the top of his class at the Academy and was able to choose where he would serve his first billet. Tom selected the Coast Guard Cutter Spar. USCGC Spar was a 180-foot seagoing buoy tender, home-ported in Portland, Maine. The summer before Tom had spent some time as a cadet on a buoy tender and saw the officer compliment on the vessel was small and as a consequence “you got to do a lot”.
A Buoy Tenders’ primary mission is to position, maintain, repair and replace navigational aids and buoys. Tom found these vessels were a great place to learn ship handling and, more important, how to be an officer. The crew would perform their work from dawn to dusk. Tom recalled working in the waters north of Portland, Maine where they would try to dock at a port or tie up to something stable every evening to avoid having to man an anchor watch. This was a two-year assignment. In the first year Tom was the junior officer and in the second year he moved up to Operations Officer, the number three in command.
“It was a real great opportunity. I learned a great deal, but I really had an interest in the law”. Tom had taken the mandatory law course for all cadets while he was at the Academy. “All Coast Guard officers are, by statute, officers of the Customs. You can make arrests on the high seas and in the special maritime jurisdictions in the United States”. Tom pointed out that the Coast Guard had been involved in law enforcement since its founding by Alexander Hamilton to stop smuggling, which became a major mission again in Prohibition. Over Tom’s years, the Coast Guard has become more active in fisheries enforcement, boardings and then drug and migrant interdiction.
Tom applied to law school as part of a new pilot program by the Coast Guard. Previously an officer would have to do two tours of duty before they could apply to law school, meaning the wait was four or five years. The pilot program allowed officers go directly to law school after their first tour. Tom applied to the University of Michigan and was accepted.
At the time, Tom was dating Rosalie LaMotta, his high school sweetheart. The couple had met when Tom was performing in the theater club at Fairfield Prep, an all-boys school. When young ladies were needed to fill the female parts in productions, the casting call went to Rosalie’s local all-girls Catholic high school, Notre Dame. Rather than continue a long-distance relationship the couple married and headed off to the University of Michigan in the fall of 1975. Tom really enjoyed law school as well as the big-time college football program. A big step up from the football played at the Coast Guard Academy.
While Tom was attending the University of Michigan, Rosalie enrolled at the University of Toledo Law School. When Tom graduated, his first tour of duty in a legal capacity would be at Governors Island in New York City. Rosalie still had a year remaining in law school and it was very difficult to transfer in your senior year. Fortunately, the Dean of the Toledo Law school was a Vietnam Veteran, and he helped Rosalie enroll at New York Law School) for her senior year and get her degree from Toledo.
Between 1978 and 1981 Tom was assigned to the Coast Guard Legal Office on Governors Island There were 3,000 people who lived and worked on Governors Island and nearly 2,000 more civilians who worked on the island. The island is 2 miles in circumference and is located between the Battery in lower Manhattan and Buttermilk Channel near Brooklyn. “The only way off the island was a ferry”, but you couldn’t beat the proximity to New York City. For the next three years Tom enjoyed his work, and he and Rosalie spent their free time taking advantage of all that Manhattan had to offer.
Tom’s legal work included “basically everything”. Military justice, environmental protection work, fisheries enforcement and drug enforcement. “At that time, we advised all of the Coast Guard units from Connecticut to Delaware” including the Hudson River. One of the more memorable cases Tom recalled was when he received a call at 4:17am on a Sunday morning from the Commanding Officer of the Coast Guard unit in Atlantic City. A fisherman was operating more than three miles off the coast of Atlantic City and pulled up a dead body in his fishing net. He dutifully delivered the body to the Coast Guard station and now the CO wanted to know how to dispose of the body. Tom helped him interact with the county coroner and resolve the matter.
On another occasion the brother of a Coast Guardsman was using his brother’s base housing and was caught selling between 10 and 20 pounds of marijuana. Tom contacted a U.S. Attorney in the office of the Southern District of New York, relayed the situation and requested to bring the seller to the office to press federal charges. Tom was told that office didn’t prosecute cases with less than 500 pounds of marijuana.
Tom’s next tour was the Coast Guard office in Honolulu, Hawaii. Fisheries enforcement was large area of practice because their area of operation extended to Guam, Saipan and American Samoa, Kure Island and the Island of Wake. These were particularly remote areas and difficult to travel to. Tom’s tour was from ’81 to ’83 which was the time women were entering the Coast Guard. “Someone had the idea to send one woman to join the 11 men on Kure Island for a 12-month tour. No leave and no vacation because it was so isolated. The first three women did not finish their one-year tour”. Tom was also involved with military law and from time-to-time prosecuted people assigned to Coast Guard units at court-martials. “I was in lots of little places across the Pacific Ocean”.
Tom and Rosalie took advantage of their vacation time and were able to visit, , New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, mainland China, and the Philippines. “The opportunities were really great”.
At the end of this tour in 1983 Tom had 10 years in the Coast Guard and he was focused on advancing his career. At Tom’s rank, the next assignment would hopefully be to serve as the XO of a shore command since sea duty was too long in the past. The Coast Guard saw things differently and Tom was sent to Coast Guard Headquarters in Washington, DC. ‘Washington, DC is a great magnet. It sucks everyone in at some time in your career if you are a career officer or career enlisted person”.
In 1983 Tom began his tour in an office at Trans(“Trash’) Point where the Coast Guard had their headquarters. Tom was the Senior Government Appellate Counsel where he was responsible for all Coast Guard court-martials being appealed. Tom’s boss was a member of a Joint Service Military Justice Committee. Tom was a member of the working group that supported that committee by writing updates to the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Manual for Court Martials.
In 1985 John Walker, a retired Navy officer, was arrested for selling some of the Navy’s most closely guarded secrets to the Soviet Union. Included in the information he turned over to the Soviets were the codes to track U.S. submarines and the protocol the Americans would follow in the event of a nuclear attack. Over 17 years he was paid $1 million before his arrest in 1985. The Secretary of the Navy wanted him court-martialed and given the death sentence for spying. After further research, under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, spying was punishable by death only if committed during a time of war. “These people couldn’t be tried for spying”. Espionage is a federal crime but is not eligible for a court martial proceeding because it is a capital crime.
Seeing the flaw in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the Secretary of the Navy instructed the working group to amend the Code, so Espionage was classified as a capital crime subject to court martial proceedings. This showed “that the government can work when someone really puts their mind to it…a week later we had a meeting of the working group and produced an amendment to the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Manual for Court Martials…in a month we changed the law”.
In his three years in this position Tom saw a lot. He spent a significant amount of time on urinalysis and sexual harassment cases. “My boss used to say we did everything from sex to drugs and everything in between.
Just before Tom’s Headquarters’ tour came to a close in 1987 he assisted in the first case the U.S. military directly appealed to the Supreme Court (United States v. Solario). The case dealt with restrictions placed on prosecuting court martials for crimes not committed on a military base. This was very problematic for the Coast Guard because they have very few of the Guardsman stationed on a base. This was a sexual abuse case committed by one Coast Guardsman against the daughters of another Coast Guardsman. Both Guardsmen worked in the same building. The Coast Guard brought a court-martial proceeding, but the judge ruled the Guardsman could not be court martialed because the crime was not committed on a military base. Tom appealed the case to the Coast Guard Court of Military Review and won. Tom also argued the appeal in front of the U.S. Court of Military Appeals and won. The convicted Guardsman appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Tom was part of the Solicitor General’s team and got to attend the argument before the Supreme Court. “The Justices all stand behind the curtain and then the curtain pops open and all nine of them step out to their chairs together. It’s very dramatic”. The Supreme Court upheld the conviction.
When his Headquarters’ tour of duty came to a close Tom did a homesteading tour. Homesteading is where you do not change your physical residence, but you are technically transferred to a new position. This happens when a Coast Guardsman likes where they are living and would like to extend their stay in that area. “I went on loan to the Department of Justice Admiralty and Shipping Office. I did civil admiralty trials for the Department of Justice. I did 12 trials in 24 months…most people in my firm will do 12 trials in 20 years”.
Tom’s office was in Washington, DC but he tried cases anywhere and everywhere up and down the Mississippi River, Florida, Virginia, and Louisiana to name a few jurisdictions. “I spent a year of my life one week in Parkersburg”, West Virginia. Parkersburg is on the Ohio River and there is a significant volume of cargo moving down the river from Pittsburgh. Tom was always on the road for a trial, and he learned he didn’t want to be a trial lawyer and away from home so frequently. “The closest case I tried was in Norfolk, Virginia”.
Tom talked about flotillas moving down the Mississippi as large as 60 barges. They would be four to six barges wide by 10 barges deep. Navigation of such a large object is very difficult. From time-to-time these flotillas would hit bridges, have barges sink and the result was closure of the river. This would result in commercial insurance claims and claims that the accident was the fault of the Coast Guard.
The Coast Guard is responsible for maintaining the navigational aids in U.S. waterways. These aids to navigation in the rivers marked where the water was safe for passage. However, the areas for safe passage could change based on storm surge, height of the river, the current, weather, flooding or debris. The rivers are very unlike the harbors and coastline in and around New England where the buoys often mark large rocks, which never move. The Coast Guard has experienced crews assigned along the length of the river to manage the buoys but, “It’s very difficult to keep track of where everything is because they don’t assign a specific location” along the river. Tom recalled one case in Greenville, Mississippi where a string of barges hit a bridge crossing over the river and the barges sunk.
In 1989 Tom returned to the Coast Guard Academy to teach law. “I taught everything-law”. Military law, maritime and law enforcement, constitutional law, admiralty and national law. In his third year he was named Chief of the Law Section. Tom also returned to his theatrical roots and was an Assistant to the Director of Musical Activities. In 1993 Tom was eligible for retirement and he was looking at the possible options for his next step in the Coast Guard. “My career path had really shrunk down”. Thinking he had limited options, he received a call from Personnel asking if he would consider being the Coast Guard Liaison to the United Nations. Tom knew nothing about the position and talked to the Commander currently in the position. With few other prospects and a weak civilian legal market at the time, Tom thought, why not.
In 1962 the U.S. Senator from Rhode Island, Clairborne Pell, and a former Guardsman (and Foreign Service Officer), decided it was important for the Coast Guard to have an office at the United Nations. He used his influence on the Foreign Relations Committee to make that happen. Tom would be stepping into this role.
Taking this position could require he be a ‘geographic bachelor’. He could live on Governors Island during the week and come home to his family in the New London area on the weekend. He discussed this with his family His older daughter was adamantly opposed, and she suggested the family relocate. The Donlon family benefitted immensely from the wisdom of the young lady. They moved into a newly renovated Victorian home in Nolan Park on Governors Island. These very large Victorian homes built just after the Civil War were divided into duplexes. The Donlon’s shared their house with the Executive Officer of the base. The house was divided down the middle and the Dolan’s had 6,000 square feet, four fireplaces and a front porch facing a beautiful park. From the back of the house, they could see the water toward Brooklyn.
In July of ’93 Tom reported to work and found that he would be working for Madeline Albright, the newly appointed U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations. “The best person I have ever worked for in my entire life. Very demanding, but, as long as you did your job, and did it well, she was great”.
“It was a very exciting time at the UN because the USSR had split up. We were working with the Russian Federation. Putin and his gang weren’t in charge yet”. Tom spent a lot of time working with Sergey Lavrov, the Permanent Representative of Russia (now the Foreign Minister under Putin). “Not a nice individual, but a hell of a diplomat and a hell of a representative for his country”.
Tom did not have a portfolio of countries when he arrived, but he immediately picked up Somalia, after the Blackhawk down incident. The person handling Somalia was assigned as a senior advisor to The Special Envoy to Somalia in Mogadishu and Tom stepped into his role, which included several other African Nations. “When discussions about Somalia came up, I’d go to working group meetings and Security Council meetings”. Tom would take notes and prepare talking points for Ambassador Albright. Tom recalled on one occasion attending a meeting between Ms. Albright and Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Secretary General of the UN at that time. The Secretary General asked a question about one of the talking points Tom had given to Ms. Albright. She said, ‘Commander Donlon is our point person on Somalia. He can answer your question’. “It was tremendously uplifting and empowering at the same time”.
On another occasion the officer responsible for Rwanda and Central Africa, who was an Orthodox Jew, had to be home by sundown on Friday. There was a Security Council meeting about removing Belgian troops from Rwanda that the officer could not attend and Tom stepped in and became the responsible Officer. Tom then went on to add Burundi and “the whole middle strip of Africa” to his portfolio.
It was a very exciting time for his family because Tom had an extensive entertainment budget. “You would buy food, cook and have people over, cheaper than taking one diplomat to lunch. We had the Russian legal advisor, the German legal advisor and the Canadian legal advisor” to name a few of Tom and Rosalie’s dinner guests. Those dinners included many interesting conversations. After a very exciting and interesting position, Tom retired in 1996.
After retiring from the Coast Guard Tom joined a small law firm in lower Manhattan that handled Admiralty cases, among other topics. He also got involved with bankruptcy when one of his partners found he could not get along with the bankruptcy judge After four years of a very long commute from Stamford, Connecticut to lower Manhattan he joined Robinson & Cole in Stamford, Connecticut in 2000. Tom is Senior Counsel in the Business Litigation Group where he focuses on complex trial and appellate issues.
Thank you, Tom, for all of the sacrifices you and your family have made so you could keep the Coast Guard on an even keel from a legal standpoint. We thank you for all of your hard work and diligence at the United Nations and helping Ambassador Albright advance the interests of the United States. Your career is proof that you never know where life will lead you.