Xenophon Strategies

An American Story: Ambassador Stephan M. Minikes

David A. Fuscus

My friend Steve Minikes passed away a few days ago and his obituary will recount the achievements of a highly successful man:  a graduate of Cornell University and Yale Law School; the Managing Partner of a major law firm and President George Bush’s first ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

But Steve’s story is more than of just a man with high achievements, his story is the story of America at its best  -- of everything good about our nation, about the promises of our society and the strength brought to us when immigrants choose to join us and become Americans. His story of war, survival, immigration and achievement is a quintessentially American one and Steve died a man who loved his adopted country.  

Steve Minikes was born in Nazi Germany -- his birth certificate was even emblazed with the Nazi swastika.  He once told me how he had tried to get an American document to replace it -- but was informed a government document is still a government document.

Where most childhoods are filled with playgrounds, ice cream and school -- Steve grew up in Berlin and was there when the city was destroyed by the Russians at the end of World War II.  He often remarked, without rancor, that the rubble of Berlin and the bombed out buildings were his playgrounds.  As a haunting example, he had a strong memory of sneaking into a half-destroyed home with some friends to find a sitting room almost intact except that two walls were blown off and it was open to the street below.  He remembered a writing desk that was almost untouched, with a pen and paper still organized neatly in the corner.  The work of the owner remained in a drawer -- stacks of bills to be paid, a check register and unused Nazi ration books.

It was the experience of his rubbler filled playground that led him to dream of a place where the lees of so many lives didn’t litter the streets. 

He found that place in America.

Several years after the war, Steve’s parents brought him to New York and they moved into a one room apartment in Brooklyn.  His father, a chemist, found work and Steve went about learning English and trying to fit into his brave new world.  Later in life, he would still have strong memories of this time and loved to eat hot dogs from street vendors as long as they had the onions in sauce native to New York City. 

With the resilience of the young and the drive of the ambitious, Steve excelled in school and was driven to the politics and the government of his adopted homeland.  In 1968, he worked on Nelson Rockefeller’s campaign for president with Henry Kissinger before Kissinger joined the Nixon camp.  Over the next thirty years, he served his country in senior positions with the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Export-Import Bank and as President George Bush’s first Ambassador to the second largest international organization to which the United States belongs after the UN, the OSCE.  In his profession of law, he founded the Washington office for one major law firm and become the D.C. Managing Partner for the national law firm, Thelen, Reid & Priest. 

Steve became the ambassador for the OSCE shortly after 9/11 and became a relentless advocate for our nation’s interests.  He oversaw staff placed in the U.S. embassies of over 50 countries in Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia.  He traveled heavily to fight for America, bringing the number of countries he had visited to over one hundred.

Steve had a formality about him that was generational and probably stemmed from growing up in wartorn Germany and then immigrating to the United States.  But his surface formality hid a warm man who was passionate about many things.  But most of all, Steve Minikes was passionate about the United States, the nation that gave him shelter after the storm of World War II and allowed him to go as far as his considerable talents could take him.

In today’s world of heated debates about immigration and mass deportations by the federal government, we could all learn from people like like Steve Minikes who came to these shores and received much… but gave back more.

Ruhe in Frieden in den Ort, den Sie gewählt

Stephan M. Minikes 
1938-2011

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