Lahtahnius Randolph Higgs Jr. (1909-1981)

From the Foreign Service Journal's 1936 photo supplement.

  Mississippi native Lahtahnius Randolph Higgs Jr. sports one of the most eye-popping first names you'll read about here and hiding behind that bizarre first name is the story of a career diplomat who served as Vice-Consul and Consul in areas in Mexico, Indonesia, Finland, and Sweden. In his later years, Higgs took on more substantial roles in the state department, including time as deputy director of the Office of Eastern European Affairs, and ended his career as a State Department security evaluations senior officer. The son of Lahtahnius Randolph Higgs Sr. (1866-1930) and the former Etta Larina Abernethy, Lahtahnius Randolph Higgs was born in Shannon, Mississippi on September 9, 1909. Despite this peculiar name being shared by both father and son, I have no intriguing backstory as to its origin or historical significance.

  A student at the West Point Hugh School, L. Randolph Higgs later studied at the University of Mississippi from 1927-1930 and in the summer of 1929 undertook further study at the University of Alabama. Following his graduation from the University of Mississippi Higgs enrolled at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, where he studied from 1930-31. After passing the appropriate examination Higgs was named Foreign Service Officer unclassified and in January 1932 entered into his first diplomatic post, that of Vice Consul in Tampico, Mexico. He resided in that country through the remainder of 1932 and in April 1933 returned to the United States to undertake further study at the Foreign Service Officer's Training School. 

  Returning overseas in late 1933, L. Randolph Higgs was designated temporary Vice Consul at Batavia, Java, and just two days following that appointment was transferred to Surabaya, Java, where he remained until July 1935. Shortly before his Surabaya consulship, Higgs married to Lafayette, Indiana native Gladys Marice Weeks on September 2, 1933, their marriage taking place in Chicago. The couple would later divorce and following Higgs' retirement from the foreign service he remarried in 1966 to Marcia Nadine Lindgren (1917-2013), who would survive him upon his death in 1981. Both unions were childless.

From the Ole Miss Yearbook, 1929.

  In July 1935 Higgs was again named as vice-consul in Batavia, with his service in that area extending one year. The following July he was selected as 3rd secretary and vice-consul at Helsingfors (Helsinki), Finland, where he was stationed until his return to the state department in 1940. Higgs' first stay in Helsinki saw him narrowly escape death in January 1940 when an incendiary device struck the residence of Minister H.F. Arthur Schoenfeld. The Foreign Service Journal later reported on the incident, detailing that Higgs had been sitting in the villa's living room just twenty minutes prior to the bomb exploding.  

   Beginning in April 1944 Higgs occupied the role of 2nd Secretary and vice-consul in Stockholm, Sweden, and at various points between 1944-45 held the additional post of secretary of mission in Helsinki. In these posts, Higgs would have a considerable impact, as diplomatic relations with Finland had been broken in June 1944 due to that country's alliance with Nazi Germany. Dispatched from the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm, Higgs would be sent to Helsinki in January 1945, becoming the first American diplomatic officer to serve in that country since relations were severed the year prior. Higgs would have charge of the American mission in Helsinki until the arrival of Maxwell W. Hamilton, President Roosevelt's designee. Prior to Hamilton's arrival, Higgs would "take care of American political interests in Finland" and also met with Finnish prime minister Juho Paasikivi and consulted with him on Finland's "war guilt."

   In June 1945 L. Randolph Higgs advanced to the post of First Secretary of the American Legation at Stockholm (in addition to his duties as consul) and in 1947 was transferred to Bern, Switzerland, where he was counselor of legation. His time in Switzerland concluded in May 1949 and afterward returned the United States, where for nearly a year he was detailed to the National War College in Washington, D.C. In June 1950 he was appointed deputy director for the state department's Office of Eastern European Affairs, and in 1952 was dispatched to Trieste (on the Italian-Yugoslavia border) as a political advisor, "having the equivalent of two-star rank." This period saw Higgs as a troubleshooter on the "Trieste problem", extending from the disputed border area between Italy and Yugoslavia, and his 1981 obituary further notes his contributing "significantly to the formulation of U.S. policies leading to the settlement of 'the Trieste problem.'''

L. Randolph Higgs, from the Foreign Service Journal, March 1947.

    In 1954 Higgs again returned to Washington, D.C. to serve the state department, this time as a deputy operations coordinator. During this period "Randy" Higgs was briefed on several occasions by CIA director Allen Dulles on possible Russian meddling in Middle Eastern water ports and oil-rich areas. From 1957-58 Higgs was stationed in Lebanon as counselor of legation in Beirut, serving under U.S. Ambassador Donald Heath. This was followed by a two-year residency (1958-1960) in Wellington, New Zealand, where Higgs was counselor of legation, and in 1962 he retired from the diplomatic service as a "senior mutual security evaluations officer." Following retirement, Higgs and his wife resided in Ormond Beach, Florida, where he died aged 71 on April 22, 1981. He was later returned to Mississippi for burial in the Higgs family plot at the Shannon Cemetery in Lee County.

From a 1981 State Department newsletter.