REGINALD BARTHOLOMEW

REGINALD BARTHOLOMEW, a senior diplomat and ambassador who taught at Wesleyan from 1964 to 1968 before joining the government, died Aug. 26, 2012, at age 76. Always interested in working overseas, he passed the Foreign Service exam as a sophomore at Dartmouth College. After graduating in 1958 with degrees in history and political science, he attended graduate school at the University of Chicago, where he received his master’s in political science, worked toward his doctorate, and taught, in addition to spending a year in France studying French politics. He then took a job teaching European government and politics at Wesleyan, where he met Leslie H. Gelb, a former New York Times reporter who worked with him later in the Defense and State departments, and who was teaching at Wesleyan as well. In 1968 Mr. Gelb persuaded him to join the staff at the Pentagon, from which he moved to and from various departments in different roles. During his long tenure, he served four presidents, negotiated for nuclear disarmament with the Soviet Union and for the preservation of American military bases in Europe, served as ambassador to Spain and Italy, and survived a bomb attack while ambassador to Lebanon in 1984. He received an honorary degree from Wesleyan in 1985. Among those who survive are his wife, Rose-Anne Dognin Bartholomew, three sons, a daughter, seven grandchildren, and his brother.