Francis Terry McNamara was born in Troy, New York on November 2, 1927 to John F. McNamara, Sr. and Ellin F. Fennelly. His mother was a career civil servant with the State of New York. In 1944 during World War II, an underaged Mr. McNamara convinced a Navy recruiter to sign him up, and he spent the latter part of the war in the submarine service, being discharged in 1946. After the War, he entered Russell Sage College in Troy, New York. His education was interrupted when he was called back on active duty with the Navy during the Korean War, from 1950 to 1951. Returning to college after Korea, McNamara graduated from Russell Sage College in 1953 with a B.A. From 1954 to 1955 he was with the State Bank of Albany, Albany, N.Y., and from 1955 to 1956, he served as a management intern with the United States Army at Watervliet, N.Y.
Mr. McNamara joined the Foreign Service in 1956. An experienced Africanist, he served at seven African posts beginning in 1957 with his assignment to the U.S. Embassy at Salisbury, Rhodesia and was ambassador to three of them: Gabon, São Tomé and Príncipe (concurrently with his assignment to Gabon), and Cape Verde. In 1967 and 1968 was an economic officer in the Bureau of African Affairs in the Department. His other African postings were Zaire, Tanzania and Benin, where he was Deputy Chief of Mission from 1972 until 1974. Mr. McNamara held a variety of posts outside of Africa, as well. He served as Consul General at Quebec from 1975 to 1979, and Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, from 1985 to 1987. In 1980 and 1981, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs.
Mr. McNamara was posted to Vietnam three times during the Vietnam War, serving as provincial adviser with the CORDS program in I Corps, first principal officer at Danang, and Consul General at Can Tho. Following the American evacuation of Vietnam in April, 1975, Mr. McNamara was Associate Director of the Task Force for Resettlement of Indochinese Refugees in the Department before taking his assignment to Quebec.
Mr. McNamara earned a masters degree from George Washington University in 1972, and he is an alumnus of the Naval War College and the Armed Forces Staff College. He has also served as a foreign affairs fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and a senior research fellow at the National Defense University.
Mr. McNamara retired in 1993 after 37 years of service.
Mr. McNamara's assignment to Can Tho, Vietnam was the basis for "Escape with Honor: My Last Hours In Vietnam", written with former British diplomat Adrian Hill (Washington, D.C., Brassey's Memories of War Series, 1997). It is a vivid account of the final days of the U.S. Consulate at Can Tho, and Mr. McNamara's harrowing evacuation of his U.S. and Vietnamese employees and dependents by boat down the Bassac River on April 29—30, 1975 during the American evacuation of South Vietnam.
Mr. McNamara's publications also include "The French in Black Africa" (Washington: National Defense University Press, 1989), a standard work in English on France's unusually close relations with its former African colonies.
