The heady and aristocratic calling of international diplomacy has dipped once again into relatively isolated and out-of-the-way Ketchum and plucked up two more people to be envoys.
Longtime valley civic activist Susan Passovoy has been named honorary consul of Poland, and part-time resident John Roos, brother of Business As Usual owner Brad Roos, has been nominated by President Barack Obama to be U.S. ambassador to Japan.
The Polish ambassador to the United States, Robert Kupiecki, will visit the valley to present credentials to Passovoy during weekend festivities June 27-28. In addition to the Polish consulate here, four other countries have consulates in Idaho—Spain, France, Mexico and the small Himalayan nation of Nepal, which is represented in Sun Valley by William Cassell.
Among the official events will be a free public showing of the Oscar-nominated film "Katyn" at the Ketchum Community Library on Sunday at 6 p.m. "Katyn" is the chilling story of the Soviet execution in 1940 of 22,000 Polish military officers and others, and the cover-up that continued for several generations.
Passovoy's improbable appointment is the result of one of those accidental but fateful meetings. A retired attorney who practiced for several decades in San Francisco and moved to Sun Valley in 2000, Passovoy and her husband, Robert Kaplan, own a California winery, California Bubble Works. She is chairwoman of the Blaine County Housing Authority board and a director of the Sagebrush Equine Training Center for the Handicapped.
Four years ago she met Anne Applebaum, whose 2003 non-fiction book, "Gulag: A History," won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize, and her husband, Radoslaw Sikorski, now Poland's foreign minister, when the author visited the valley to lecture at a book club of Passovoy's husband.
"I've been to Poland. I fell in love with their story," Passavoy said. "It's an exciting place."
Sikorski urged Passovoy to apply for the consul position.
<
Next year, she will spend five months in Poland while her husband will teach as a visiting professor at the University of Warsaw's graduate school of business.
Passovoy explained that in her voluntary diplomatic post, she would provide assistance to Polish citizens living and traveling in Idaho, provide educational activities and materials about Poland and arrange cultural and commercial exchanges.
"I look forward to introducing Poland to the people of Idaho," Passovoy said.
John Roos has yet to be confirmed to the Tokyo post, which is regarded as of equal prestige as the U.S. embassies in London and Paris. Roos, 54, is a successful San Francisco high-tech attorney who owns a Ketchum condo and skis here in the winter, and who raised $500,000 for Obama's campaign. Brad Roos said his brother "has always wanted to be involved in national politics."
Poland's ambassador to appear
The Polish ambassador to the United States, Robert Kupiecki, will visit the valley to present credentials to Ketchum resident Susan Passovoy during weekend festivities June 27-28.
Among the official events will be a free public showing of the Oscar-nominated film "Katyn" at the Ketchum Community Library on Sunday at 6 p.m.
"Katyn" is the chilling story of the Soviet execution in 1940 of 22,000 Polish military officers and others, and the cover-up that continued for several generations.
