Rebecca Burrum Matlock (born Rebecca Inez Burrum, 1928 in Manchester, Tennessee) is a photographer and the wife of former U.S. Ambassador Jack F. Matlock, Jr.
Born Rebecca Inez Burrum to Hugh H. Burrum and Leona M. Graham, she lived in Waverly and Gallatin, Tennessee. As an undergraduate at Duke University she met and married Jack F. Matlock, Jr.
After graduation, they moved to New York City where both took graduate studies at Columbia University. In 1953 they moved to Hanover, New Hampshire, where the first three of their children (James, Hugh, and Nell) were born. In 1956 the Matlocks joined the Foreign Service and were posted in following years to Vienna, Oberammergau, Moscow, Accra, Zanzibar, and Dar es Salaam. Two more children were born during their first tour in Moscow (David and Joseph).[1]
The Matlocks served four tours in the Soviet Union, between 1961 and 1991, and during that time she travelled to 14 of the 15 Union Republics.[2] They were posted to Moscow in 1961, 1974, 1981, and finally in 1987 when Jack Matlock was appointed Ambassador to the Soviet Union. During their final tour they lived at Spaso House in Moscow until 1991 and their retirement from the Foreign Service.
After leaving the Foreign Service they lived for five years in North Stonington, Connecticut, and New York City; and then moved to Princeton, New Jersey. In 2009 she was named Honorary Trustee of the Friends of Davis International Center of Princeton University.[3] The Matlocks now divide their time between a home in Princeton and her family farm in Booneville, Tennessee.
The Matlock’s first Foreign Service post was in Vienna, Austria. Here is one of her stories:
We crossed on the S.S. United States back in the days when one could travel first class with one's family, and we enjoyed that very much. And when we got to Le Havre, my husband said, “Now we can send on some of our suitcases and trunks straight to Vienna since we are driving.” So I blithely sent away everything including the suitcases that had the diapers for the twins. This was before the days of disposable diapers anywhere except in the United States. It took the trunks and suitcases at least 6 weeks to arrive in Vienna. So our daily task was to go to drug stores and try to get the paper diapers they sold for invalids. Of course we would buy their whole supply and it would take them another week to get supplied again. That was just my little introduction into the differences that one finds living abroad from living at home...
In Vienna one thing that was difficult to do and I look back on with pleasure - and I feel that it's something that was important. We were expected to make formal calls. And this was not easy to do with three young children in a hotel room - to leave them and go off and call on the wives of the senior men at the Embassy. And the terrible thing was they would return the calls. There was a certain period in the afternoon when the calling could be done.
I remember once using Clorox in the bathtub to wash the clothing for our two two-year olds and our four-year old and then having Mrs. Tapley Bennett, the wife of the Political Counselor, wearing furs with a long string of pearls, open the door. There I was with a strange smell coming out of the bathroom of the hotel room. It was terribly embarrassing.[1]
Matlock had two more children during the first tour in Moscow.
I managed to get pregnant while I was in the States. I was in Florida and we were ready to come to Moscow. You can imagine my dilemma there! But I went to Lane Bryant where they make clothes for ladies who are a little bit larger than other ladies, sweaters and all kinds of things which did very nicely for Moscow. And then I had about three hours in New York and I dashed off to Saks Fifth Avenue and went waddling onto the ship loaded with two shopping bags full of maternity clothes for Moscow. Those served me well because I had not one, but two children.
Well David was born in Helsinki, I went to Helsinki with David, and since by then the twins were six, I wanted him to have a little brother right away. Well Joe came a month early so he was born here in Moscow. I wrote up the experience as I usually do when something is extraordinary. It was required reading for many years for people coming to Moscow to find out what it's like to have a child in a Soviet hospital. It's not your usual experience…[1]
Jack Matlock was Vice Consul when they first came to Moscow.
Yes, he was the low man on the totem pole in the Consular Section. The most interesting case we had at that point was a young man who had come to live in the Soviet Union. He married here and had a child, a very young child. And he decided that he was going to go back to America. He came in to get a repatriation loan and to ask for a visa for his wife. Well this young man's name was Lee Harvey Oswald.
Now I think the tragedy is the fact that he did not return after he came to the Consulate a few years earlier to renounce his American citizenship. And in cases like this, the Consul suggests a person think about it for at least 24 hours and then come back. Well he didn't come back, so he was still an American citizen. If he had come back and done what he had originally wanted to do which was renounce his citizenship, then he would not have had the opportunity to kill President Kennedy.[1]
Later, Jack Matlock was promoted to Third Secretary in the Political Section.
In the Political Section then, as now, people worked very, very long hours. I remember we were preparing for a Halloween party at the dacha out of town. We all had our costumes. It was going to be a great party. And on the afternoon of the day the party was going to be, the husbands started calling in and saying that they couldn't make it, including my husband. And we, the wives, were getting more and more angry. We thought that they just didn't want to get dressed in their silly costumes and drive out there. Well it was the Cuban Missile Crisis.[1]
After leaving Moscow, the Matlocks spent thee years in Ghana.
We had let it be known that we'd like to go to a place where Soviet relationship was important. We went to Ghana where Kwame Nkrumah was in charge. The Soviets were making a very, very strong effort there.
After about a year and a half Nkrumah was toppled. I should say that our house was very close to the airport. One day we - our servants - heard that the Russians were coming. They started running, running away and told us that we should evacuate the area. So I woke up the kids and put them all in the car and we went driving over to the other part of town. The whole city was just full of people - terrified people running away from the airport. They'd all heard the Russians were coming.
Well what it was that the Russians had been told they had to leave. They were going to be evacuated so they were coming to the airport to be flown out of the country. But the whole town ran away because someone overheard a conversation at the airport and they heard that the area must be cleared because the Russians were coming. They were terrified! [1]
The Matlocks spent two years on Zanzibar and one in Dar es Salaam on mainland Tanzania.
Well we liked Africa so we wanted another African post. We were not ready to go back to Washington and we were not ready to go back to the Soviet Union. So we got an absolutely marvelous post. We went to Zanzibar. And Zanzibar of course is a very, very special place.
But at that particular moment it was also very much concerned with not only the Russians, but the Chinese and the East Germans. So we lived between the Chinese and East Germans on Zanzibar. And one of the more touching incidents was - our children spoke German - when they tried to talk with the German children just across the fence. And of course the East German teachers wouldn't let them communicate. It was really very sad to try to explain to very young children why it is you can't talk to children who share your language.[1]
Matlock would organize reading groups for the Foreign Service dependents at each post.
Karen Joyce, whose husband is now the Deputy here, came to me one day and said, “Don't you think it would be nice if we organized the women a little bit to try to have some special interest groups?” We remembered that there had at one point been an American women's organization. We went about the business of trying to make it possible for women to come together by reviving that organization. This was extremely successful.
We had lots of special interest groups. The one that I was most concerned with was the two-year seminar in Russian literature which I coordinated, but we did it ourselves. And then when a visitor would come such as Ambassador Kennan or someone worked at the Embassy who knew the subject we were discussing, we would invite them to be a guest speaker and their reward was dinner with us afterward. Since we had a good Finnish cook, IREX professors and students were happy to conduct our sessions.
The wife of the Canadian Ambassador who was Trudy McLean tried to organize the Canadian ladies to do something that was similar because they were having some morale problems. One does in a dark and cold country. She asked me to help her with this, so I went to the organizational meeting and we talked about what we Americans did, and she thought about what was needed to do the same on a wider level internationally.
You can imagine my amazement when I came back in 1981 and found that there was an international ladies group going with 500 members! [1]
Matlock started taking photos in 1977, during a major fire at the American Embassy in Moscow.[4]
In the summer of 1981 Jack Matlock was acting Ambassador, or Chargé d’Affaires in Moscow. This meant that Rebecca had to organize the Fourth of July reception.
We decided that since he wasn't the ambassador we should cut the guest list considerably and just have a “coupe de champagne” for about fifteen hundred people here and that it shouldn't be a full-blown Fourth of July reception.
So we got busy and got all of the American champagne that we could find in Western Europe flown into Moscow. It was all chilled and waiting. Someone asked me about the reception the day before and I explained that we were going to have macadamia nuts and champagne and that was all. And she said, “Oh, do you have fifteen hundred champagne glasses at Spaso House?” And I said, “Oh my goodness!” I checked with Clemente, the Italian butler. We had one hundred and three. So, what should I do?
In Moscow what you do is call Stockman's in Helsinki. Stockman's can solve any problem you might have in Africa or Moscow. They're wonderful. All you do is call Stockman's. So of course they did have the plastic champagne glasses. Then the problem is, how do you get them to Moscow overnight?
Someone remembered that an American was traveling in Scandinavia and would be coming back through Finland by train. So Stockman's sent glasses out to the train, found the person, and asked him if he would be willing to bring them to Moscow. He very nicely said, “Yes.” So he came back with his compartment loaded with cartons of champagne glasses. I saw him a few days later and thanked him again and asked if he had enjoyed the reception. He said, “I wasn't invited.” He had been on the list that was cut! [1]
The Matlocks were posted to Czechoslovakia during the Communist period.
I think probably the most innovative thing that we did was to go around to the different towns and villages that had been liberated by Patton's army during World War II on the dates of liberation and take whole convoys of cars, and have little ceremonies at the markers… And that way we got to see a lot of people because the whole village would turn out. The first year I made photographs and the second year gave people the photographs and this got to be a very special thing... We would pre-record Jack's remarks which would come out at night on the Voice of America. This meant that the whole country was aware of the fact that not just the Soviets, but also the Americans had liberated their country... [1]
As former Legislative Liaison for the Associates of the American Foreign Service Worldwide (AAFSW), she has lobbied Congress for passage of legislation. [1]
I have spent a good bit of time in lobbying on behalf of the - as chairman for the AAFSW Legislative Liaison - lobbying on the Hill for Foreign Service women. In three categories. One, the women who have been widowed or divorced before the 1980 period when there was some relief for that.. And also on behalf of families who will find themselves in some sort of terrorist situation... And then the third thing, which I feel very, very strongly about, is the concept - it doesn't have to have that name, but the concept of the Foreign Service Associates. Where the spouses, be they male or female, can have the opportunity of using, at post, their skills, be paid for them, and have job histories, and be people in their own right rather than appendages to their spouses which is of course how people thought of us back in the old days. [1]
Her interest in photography was encouraged in 1983 when her photo “Fishing Out” won the annual art contest for State Department employees and dependents.[1] She was offered her first exhibit at the American Foreign Service Club Library in Washington DC.[2] Her subjects include landscapes, architecture, and candid “people pictures”.
She has a story about meeting Mikhail Gorbachev:
I had never met the General Secretary when he came for the Summit in Washington. I was all prepared with what I was going to say when I met him the first time, which was something to the effect of, “It's very nice to meet you at last, particularly on American soil.” And I had this all in mind ready to say. They got off the plane and Jack introduced me. Gorbachev took me by the hand and looked me in the eyes and said, “It's so very nice to meet you at last, particularly on American soil.” The only thing I could think of was, “Da!” [1]
Matlock exhibited her photographs several times in the Soviet Union. Russian speaking, she was often featured on Soviet radio and TV.[5]
Yes, this is my fourth exhibit here in Moscow and I'm slated for photo exhibitions in Leningrad and Vladivostok, as well as Tbilisi, Georgia, and Ulan Ude in Siberia.
These came about as a bit of a fluke. Jack was asked to speak at the auditorium of the cinematographers' union. They decided since they had a very large area outside the lecture hall that it would be rather nice to have several American exhibits there.
But they didn't explain that to me. So they asked me if I would exhibit my rugs. And I said, “Well I'll be glad to, but would you be interested in the photographs instead? They tell more about America than rugs. They're Scandinavian.” And they said, “Certainly.” And then I found out that they were not only talking to me, but they were talking to a lot of other people about it. It was turning into a bit of a bazaar. Nothing to be sold, but just kind of a bazaar-sort of presentation with lots of different aspects of crafts that were American.
So I decided that my photographs really didn't belong in that milieu… So they said, “Well, would you do another show all by yourself?” and so when they had an international film festival, they asked me to put up some of my photographs. I did a show for them and it was covered by television.
The Photojournalists' Union and a number of other people saw the photos. And from that I've gotten many invitations to show them. But the most impressive one I think was when they said that there were 50,000 people who came to see it here in Moscow.[1]
As of 1999, she had travelled in the Republic of Georgia 13 times, and it remains one of her favorite places:
The people are very artistic, personable, attractive and knowledgeable.[2]
Spaso House is the residence of the American Ambassador in Moscow, and Matlock has written a book ‘’At Spaso House’’ (published in Russian) that describes the period of U.S. Soviet relations 1933-1991.[6] The most famous visitors to Spaso House during her time there were the President and Mrs. Reagan who stayed there in June 1988 during a summit meeting in Moscow.[7]
They said that we would have to cover all of the windows and I said, “That's just fine provided the window curtains are white.” So overnight, practically, in Washington they whipped up window curtains for the whole house, and they came out on the plane with the President's car which was sent for him to use while he was here. One night I went to bed and there were no curtains and the next morning I woke up and there were white curtains all over the house which lightened and brightened it a lot. We were very grateful to the Reagans for that.
I found it particularly difficult to deal with Mrs. Reagan's Chief of Staff who told me that they wanted the only photographs to be the official photographs. Well I didn't much like that. And I did talk with Howard Baker toward the end of the visit since he is also a photographer. And he said, “Well don't pay any attention to him.” So I stopped paying attention and do have a few photos. I wish I had paid less attention all along.[1]
Matlock was in a position to take "people pictures" of her celebrity guests, one of whom was Boris Yeltsin.
Boris Yeltsin looked through the gallery and he looked at these different things and couldn't think of anything to say. Finally, he found a bowl of flowers and stuck his face in it. I had my camera and took a photo. He looked a little bit like Ferdinand the Bull, he was kind of out of it in that way.[4]
Matlock served on the board of the Opera Company of Boston and interviewed director Sarah Caldwell over the course of several years to produce her biography, Challenges: A Memoir of My Life in Opera.[8]
Matlock has had more than 50 exhibits of her photographs, as well as a series of exhibits by photographer Donald Schomacker, a friend since fourth grade in Tennessee. [1]
It's always the same. Whenever you go out without a camera, you know you'll see the perfect shot --Rebecca Matlock[2]
| Date | City | Venue | Exhibit | Reference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1983 | Washington, DC | American Foreign Service Club Library | Black and White in Color | [1] |
| 1984 | New York | Columbia University | On Architecture | [1] |
| 1984 | New York | Republican Women’s Club | On Architecture | [1] |
| 1985 | Seattle, WA | University of Washington | Art in Czechoslovakia, including exhibition by Donald Schomacker | [1] |
| 1988 | Moscow | Cinematographers Union | International Film Festival | [1] |
| 1989 | Moscow | Photojournalists Union | [1] | |
| January 1990 | Moscow | Writer’s Union | People | [1] |
| 1990 | Vladivostok | [1] | ||
| 1990 | Tbilisi, Georgia | [1] | ||
| 1990 | Ulan Ude | [1] | ||
| March 8, 1999 | Princeton, NJ | Stevenson Hall, Princeton University | Rebecca Matlock Exhibit | [2] |
| September, 1999 | Princeton, NJ | Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University | Excursion to Georgia | [3] |
| June 6, 2004 | Tbilisi, Georgia | Tbilisi Movie Actors' Theatre | Special Places of Rebecca | [4] |
| March 18, 2005 | Greensboro, NC | Nussbaum Center for Entrepreneurship | The Time of Mikhail Gorbachev | [5] |
| November 7–18, 2005 | Princeton, NJ | Chancellor Green café, Princeton University | The Time of Mikhail Gorbachev | [6] [7] |
| September 1, 2006 | New York, NY | Harriman Institute, International Affairs Building | Gorbachevs, Reagans and Bushes | [8] |
| November 7, 2007 | Princeton, NJ | Rockefeller College Gallery, Princeton University | Repairs of the Inca Bridge over Peru's Apurimac River | [9] |
| November, 2008 | Princeton, NJ | International Center, Princeton University | Black and White in Color | [10] |