Wymberley DeRenne Coerr (1913-1996)

From the Buffalo Courier-Express, October 9, 1967.

    A leading foreign service officer in the administrations of Presidents Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson,  Wymberley De Renne Coerr was selected by the first-named president as U.S. Ambassador to Uruguay. Following three years in that post, Coerr was named Ambassador to Ecuador, where he continued to serve until 1967 when he was expelled from the country by President Otto Arosemena Gomez, who had objected to Coerr's criticism of Ecuador's then-government. Born in New York City on October 2, 1913, Wymberley DeRenne Coerr was the son of Frederic and Audrey Coerr DeRenne Howland (1889-1931).

   A graduate of the Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, Coerr went on to enroll at Yale University, and following graduation in 1936 did post-graduate work at the Sorbonne in Paris until 1937. After his return to the United States Coerr passed the foreign service examination and in November 1939 was designated foreign service officer unclassified and Secretary in the Diplomatic Service. The following January saw Coerr named to his first consular post (that of Vice Consul in Montreal), where he was stationed until returning to the Foreign Service Officer's Training School in January 1941. Prior to this training, Coerr married to his first wife, Janet Hill, with whom he had two children, Stanton Paine (1943-2009) and Susan.

  After several months of study, Coerr recommenced with diplomatic service in June 1941 when he took the post of Vice Consul in La Ceiba, Honduras. His two-year tenure in that country concluded in early 1943 and in March of that year was transferred to the U.S. Consulate in Mexico City, where he was vice-consul for a brief three month period. June 1943 saw Coerr appointed as Vice Consul at Acapulco de Juarez, where he served until his resignation in January 1944. 

  For the next three years, Wymberley Coerr worked outside the state department, being the manager and education director for the Consumer Cooperative Corps. After his return to the state department in 1947, he was named as Consul at Suva, Fiji Islands, and afterward held the office of deputy chief of missions at various posts in Honduras, Guatemala, and Bolivia. For a time Coerr was a director of the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs, his full dates of service being uncertain at this time. Coerr entered into his first high profile state department post in April 1961 when he began service as acting assistant secretary of state for Inter-American Affairs under President Kennedy, serving in that capacity until July. Kennedy would later appoint Coerr as U.S. Ambassador to Uruguay, where he would serve from 1962-1965.

President Kennedy and Wymberley Coerr, 1962. Courtesy of the JFK Presidential Library.

  Following Lyndon Johnson's succession to the presidency, Wymberley Coerr left Uruguay to accept the Ambassadorship to Ecuador, entering into his duties in March 1965. He would reside in that country capital, Quito, until 1967, and in that year found himself in diplomatic hot water when he was accused by Ecuadorian president Oscar Arosemena Gomez of making open criticisms of the government while speaking at the Colegio Americano in Quito. These "unacceptable public criticisms of leading government officials" drew the ire of not only Arosemena but other high ranking Ecuadorian politicians, who then issued a request for Coerr's expulsion from the U.S. Embassy. Despite Coerr's firm denial on making the remarks (as well as having the backing of journalists and American officials), he was withdrawn from Ecuador in October 1967.

  While his diplomatic career abroad ended on a sour note, Coerr continued service in the state department after his return stateside, being the assistant director for the state department's security affairs group, and beginning in 1974 spent two years as the Smithsonian Institution's international programs director. Having divorced in the mid-1960s, Coerr remarried in 1965 to Eleanor Page (1922-2010), who later gained distinction as a children's author, writing, amongst other pieces, Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes in 1977. Coerr's later years saw him residing in McLean, Virginia, and would combat Parkinson's disease. He removed to Mexico for treatment in mid-1996 and later died in Ajijic, Mexico on October 5, 1996, three days after his 83rd birthday.