Diplomat who retired to Arlington Heights
John Kordek’s decades of service in the U.S. diplomatic corps took him to meetings with former President Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II and foreign leaders around the world.
But, in his later years, living in Arlington Heights, he was just John.
“He would joke about a lot of things,” said his wife, Alice, noting that her husband’s humor might surprise anyone who expected only seriousness from a former highranking diplomat.
Mr. Kordek, former U.S. ambassador to Botswana and a participant in the Geneva and Reykjavik summits between Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, died Feb. 16. He was 82.
Raised in Bucktown, Mr. Kordek joined the Air Force after graduating from Weber High School and served with the Strategic Air Command 818th Air Division.
After returning to Chicago, he graduated from DePaul University, where he was recruited to join the U.S. Foreign Service and he and his future wife met. After only a handful of dates post-graduation, they were married, a union hastened by a requirement for his first State Department mission, in Communistruled Yugoslavia.
“The Department of State had a rule that said unmarried men could not go to countries such as that,” Alice Kordek said. “In the end, he had to find a wife.”
They were married for 56 years. His wife said they were bonded not only by their common interests in travel and geography but also a shared sense of humor.
Mr. Kordek’s knowledge of Serbo-Croatian proved valuable in Yugoslavia, where one of his first assignments was escorting Louis Armstrong during the trumpeter’s 1965 visit as part of a State Department cultural program. He later was assigned as deputy chief of mission in Poland in the late 1970s, serving there during the rise of the Solidarity movement and visits from Pope John Paul II.
“Life was difficult there because there was a food shortage,” Alice Kordek said. “I stood in line for bread. We couldn’t get sugar.”
Mr. Kordek’s other assignments took the couple to Italy, Belgium and Venezuela.
Alice Kordek said her husband was particularly impressed with Reagan, who nominated him for ambassador to Botswana in 1988 and later gave him a presidential award for “sustained superior conduct of U.S. foreign policy.”
Alice Kordek said that, during a family trip to Washington, D.C., when they met with Reagan, their son Andrew mentioned that the football team at his school, Quincy College, recently played the president’s alma mater, Eureka College.
“And the president said, ‘And, Andrew, how did you do?’ “Alice Kordek said. “And Andrew said, ‘We beat your butt.’ To which the president responded, ‘Well, things haven’t changed.’ ”
One of Mr. Kordek’s proudest achievements as ambassador to Botswana from 1988 to 1990 was opening a new U.S. embassy. He also became close with President Quett Masire, who had been a leader of the independence movement there. Mr. Kordek was one of the few ambassadors to try to speak the country’s language, Setswana, doing so on a radio broadcast to explain the Fourth of July.
After he retired, the Kordeks settled in Arlington Heights, and he returned to DePaul as an associate vice president and taught graduate courses on World War II and the Holocaust. DePaul gave him the “Via Sapientiae Award,” the university’s highest faculty-staff honor, for educating generations of students and faculty “about the horrors of bigotry and the promotion of the value of dignity and respect for all people.”
In 1995, President Bill Clinton appointed Mr. Kordek to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council in Washington. He also named him a member of the U.S. presidential delegations to commemorate the 50th anniversaries of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the 1945 liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camps.
Mr. Kordek also chaired the Chicago-Warsaw Sister Cities program and was co-chair of the National Polish American-Jewish American National Council.
In addition to his wife and son, Mr. Kordek is survived by his daughter Catherine Stover; grandchildren Joshua Kordek, Henry Stover and Will Stover, his brother Phillip Kordek and his sister Judy Pasowicz. A memorial service will be held at a later date.
Mr. Kordek kept abreast of world affairs in his latter years and retained a hopeful outlook.
“He was still reading four of five newspapers a day,” Alice Kordek said. “And he had an opinion that, ‘This, too, shall pass.’ “