James Clement Dunn

Who was James Clement Dunn?

James Clement Dunn was an American diplomat and a career employee of the United States Department of State. He served as the Ambassador of the United States to Italy, France, Spain, and Brazil. He had lived in Rome since his retirement in 1956. Born in Newark, on December 27 of 1890, and privately educated, Dunn at first wanted to become an architect, an interest that remained with him all his life.

In 1917 he became assistant naval attaché to Haiti. In 1920, he was made a third secretary at the embassy in Spain, a post he held for two years. He was chargé d'affaires in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in 1922-24. After other assignments, he became a first secretary at the American Embassy in London. From 1928-1930 he served as the first person to hold the office of Chief of Protocol of the United States. In 1930-35, served as counsel to the Commission for the Study of Haiti. Dunn was chief political adviser to the Berlin Conference in 1945; deputy at the American meetings of the Council of Foreign Ministers in London, Paris and New York in 1945-46, and a member of the delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in 1946. He was a governor of the Metropolitan Club and a member of the Knickerbocker Club, the River Club, the Regency Club and the Whist Club in New York, and of the Alibi Club in Chevy Chase, Md. He is survived by his wife, the former Mary Augusta Armour; two daughters Marianna Dunn of Manhattan and Cynthia Esterlechner of West Germany; three grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.