February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
On the diplomatic life: “It only works well when you’ve got a loyal and dedicated staff like I’ve enjoyed in New York.”
When your job takes you all over the world, but never allows you to settle for long into any one place, it’s inevitable that you accumulate things beyond the ordinary, and the ordinarily anticipated.
Eugene Hutchinson can point to a diplomatic grab bag of missions accomplished, exotic mementoes, memories of far-flung places and, just for good measure, a working knowledge of Serbo-Croat.
And that’s just the story so far.
Hutchinson, the ubiquitous and hugely popular Irish consul general in New York, is packing his diplomatic bags again; this time for the sultry reaches of the Malay Peninsula.
New York’s loss will be Kuala Lumpur’s gain.
And over the horizon from both, Magherafelt will once more be smiling proudly for a native son who, as they say in Ireland’s northern reaches, has ‘bin a place.
It was the North and its troubled predicament that in large part inspired the young Hutchinson to sit for an entry examination to the Irish foreign service.
This, and the fact that Hutchinson already had a toehold in the Irish capital.
After attending St. Patrick’s College, Armagh, and the Rainey Endowed School in his County Derry hometown, Hutchinson secured a place in Trinity College Dublin.
His career path had only a few yards to go in the literal sense. The Department of Foreign Affairs was only about 20 minutes walk away on St. Stephen’s Green.
But first there was a matter of a degree. This was duly secured, history and political science being the majors.
What followed might have been a far different path. Hutchinson studied for a diploma in education. Teaching beckoned.
Once the diploma was added to his growing academic portfolio, however, Hutchinson returned to Trinity for post-graduate work in medieval Irish history.
Somehow, the machinations of the medieval world didn’t quite attract like those of the contemporary version.
Ireland’s accession to what was then the European Economic Community, and the first attempt to reach a peace accord in Northern Ireland – the ultimately ill-fated Sunningdale Agreement – proved to be stronger pulls for the young Derry man.
Hutchinson sat for the civil service exam and soon after found himself in the DFA’s economic division just as the Republic began to enjoy the first fruits of its newly acquired European dimension.
It was at this point that diplomacy’s gravity kicked in. Hutchinson’s day planner turned red, white and blue and he was on the plane for New York.
Some might recall a humorous, if slightly callow, Irish vice consul in the Manhattan of the mid-1970s.
On his first overseas posting, Hutchinson was plunged into the world of passports, wills and estate cases.
Making the world a better place on a more macro level would have to wait.
Still, the world would come calling. After the consulate, Hutchinson spent five years coming to grips with global issues at the Irish mission to the United Nations.
In all, he was to spend five years in New York before his return to Dublin in 1983. The Big Apple had become a second home for Hutchinson. It was to do so again.
But first there would be other places, familiar and starkly contrasting.
A two-year stint in Dublin was followed by a pair at the Irish embassy in Lagos.
Hutchinson’s time in the Nigerian capital dovetailed with that of Dermot Gallagher, a future Irish ambassador to the United States who is today the secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs.
Variety being the price of diplomatic life, Hutchinson had hardly adapted to the West African climate than he found himself in Brussels dealing with the intricacies of fishing quotas, German unification and European Community expansion.
This was mostly positive stuff. Perhaps inevitably, however, Hutchinson’s work on one of the better aspects of the continent’s story was soon sidelined by a face-to-face encounter with its more destructive side.
The now savvy and considerably more experienced Irish diplomat was assigned to war-ravaged Sarajevo where he spent more than a year working with the top international diplomatic team charged with implementing the Dayton Accords for post break-up Yugoslavia.
Hutchinson was now in a place that was in ways Belfast writ large, a place which, as he would confide in later years, was “haunted by the shadow of hard men.”
Sarajevo begat London. Hutchinson spent four years as counselor at the Irish embassy in the British capital before he returned to familiar New York in the late summer of 2001.
The September 11 attacks on America would keep the Park Avenue consular offices open around the clock.
Not for the first time, Hutchinson was to be reminded of the overwhelming value of diplomacy in a world where far less virtuous forces all too often hold sway.
Cometh the time, cometh the man.
In the months, and now the years, that have followed 9/11, Hutchinson has reminded the Irish and Irish-American community in New York that the power of conciliation wins out in the end.
Hutchinson has more than impressed with what at times seems to be an ability to be in more than one place at one time.
“He will be as hard to replace as he was to keep up with,” quipped Irish Echo publisher Sean Finlay.
“But in all seriousness, Eugene Hutchinson has done a great job for Ireland and the community in New York,” Finlay said.
“Being consul general is a demanding job. But Eugene has terrific judgment, a great capacity for hard work and consummate people skills,” said John Connorton, an attorney and prominent member of New York’s Irish-American community.
American Ireland Fund chairman, Loretta Brennan Glucksman, concurred.
“Eugene has made a huge impact. He and his wife Adele have been a terrific team,” she said.
The team, alas, is heading for the departure lounge.
The tropics await and so also does a full ambassadorial portfolio that includes not just Malaysia, but also Thailand, Vietnam and Laos.
A chance to pick up a working knowledge of Hmong perhaps. Or some fiery Southeast Asian cuisine.
Eugene Hutchinson, a consul most general, is about to find out.