Gottemoeller recalls visiting farm

MARIA STEIN - Deputy Secretary Rose Gottemoeller, the No. 2 official at NATO, said she holds fond memories of the farm in Maria Stein where her father, Ben, grew up.  

Rose Gottemoeller was one of about 250 family members and friends who returned over the weekend to celebrate the 180th anniversary of the family farm at 2287 Goettemoeller Road that has been owned and operated by her uncle, Dale Goettemoeller. Some came from as far away as the East Coast, but Rose Gottemoeller came from Brussels, Belgium.

"My dad was Ben …, son of Fred and Catharine, and he grew up on this farm," she told the newspaper, pointing out she had spent most of her childhood growing up in Dearborn, Michigan, and Columbus. "We used to come when I was a kid to see the farm and hang out with our cousins."

Rose Gottemoeller, who had last visited the farm 18 years ago, recalled big family picnics and other events.

"I also remember when I was a little girl, the big family weddings when all my cousins were getting married and how much fun it was to come out to the big country weddings and dance in my stocking feet," she said. "I really enjoyed that a lot as a small child so this place has always been very special to me."

She noted that for most of her life she has lived in urban settings, such as Columbus; Washington, D.C.; London; Moscow and now Brussels.

"I just really feel very deep roots to this family history that my German ancestors came here before Germany was even a country that had come together," she said. "They came here and came over the Appalachian Mountains and down the Ohio River and up the Miami River and founded this farm. It's just such a proud history that I always liked to recall it and tell it to people."

In fact, her NATO colleagues were intrigued when she told them for vacation she would be going to recharge her batteries and visit cousins at the farm in the United States that had been owned by the family for nearly two centuries.

"I think they were a little surprised to think that there would be those deep roots because often when you're abroad, when you're living in Europe … they don't think of America as a place where people have a long history," she said. "Many immigrants came over even in the 1900s so they don't think about (us) as having those deep roots."

Rose Gottemoeller traced her interest in the Soviet Union to a night when her father had taken her outside to watch the satellite Sputnik - a little light flying low across the sky like a bright star.

"I was a Sputnik baby because the first thing that got me interested was seeing that Sputnik up in the sky and then the fact that we had this competition with the Soviet Union and in the end we won the day because it's … just now the anniversary … of the moon landing," she said.

She said she studied the Russian language both in junior high and high school as many schools at the time had such programs.

"I had pretty modest ambitions to begin with. I wanted to be a Russian interpreter at the United Nations. I thought that'd be a cool job to have, so that's why I was studying Russian," she explained.

She majored in Russian at Georgetown University, where she decided she wanted to do more than translate, she wanted to focus on the broader policy side of things, she said. She got her master's degree from George Washington University, where she was interested in using science and technology to figure out a way to work better with the Soviets to address the threats of the Cold War.

"We all feared the Soviets during the Cold War," she said. "They were pointing nuclear missiles at us. Everybody from my generation remembers the Cuban Missile Crisis from 1963. I was 10 years old and the nuns told us that night, 'You better get home quick because there could be a nuclear war tonight. You need to be with your parents.' "

Rose Gottemoeller went on to hold numerous positions, including deputy director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London; deputy under secretary of energy for defense nuclear nonproliferation; assistant secretary and director for nonproliferation and national security at the U.S. Department of Energy; a senior associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, with joint appointments to the nonproliferation and Russia programs; director of the Carnegie Moscow Center; under secretary for arms control and international security at the U.S. Department of State and since October 2016, deputy secretary general of NATO.

"I am No. 2 at NATO so I back up everything that my boss, that is the secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg (does)," she said.

For instance, she often chairs meetings and gives speeches in Stoltenberg's stead. She also oversees management and administrative duties. For instance, she was in charge of a team that transitioned NATO to its new headquarters.

On Aug. 5, 2015, serving as the U.S. State Department's undersecretary for arms control and international security, she attended the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in Japan alongside U.S. Ambassador Caroline Kennedy.

"It was a great honor for me to be representing the United States along with Ambassador Kennedy, and it was extremely moving to be there and to talk with some of the survivors and hear their stories and to realize that in fact it's very important to ensure that we never experience that kind of nuclear attack again anywhere in the world."

Correction:

Rose Gottemoeller, the No. 2 official at NATO, and Dale Goettemoeller of Maria Stein are first cousins. Their relationship was listed incorrectly in the article. The error was made in reporting.