Irena Baruch Wiley

While living in Bangkok I was tapped several times to serve as escort officer for various celebrities who were in the country on USO tours.  In 1969 I was contacted to meet and escort in country a visiting artist by the name of Irena Wiley.  She was on a "handshake" tour which means she would visit enlisted and officers' clubs and hospitals.  She would sit and visit with them while doing a sketch of them.  I had a small amount of information about her, but as I was to discover I was about to become acquainted with one of the most extraordinary people I have ever met.
Irena was whippet thin and wore baggy legged trousers with a safari style jacket and a scarf.  She was a  smoker and her cigarettes of choice were fat, non-filtered Columbian ones.  She reminded me very much of Katherine Hepburn.  When she spoke with you she was very intent and interested in you.  She had a charming European accent and spoke in a throaty and husky voice.  As our tour commenced I began to realize that this was an important personage.  One morning she told me that, although she had wanted to rest, the American ambassador and his wife had whisked her off to the embassy for a visit.  As we were flying in to one of the Air Force Bases she casually dropped the fact she was a friend of the commanding officer.  We were met with great fanfare.  Let me tell you about this remarkable woman.  Some of these stories she told me herself and others I managed to piece together through research and reading her book.
She was born in Lodz, Poland, in 1906, and was there when Warsaw fell.  She studied art in Warsaw, Vienna and London and, although a fine artist, she considered herself a sculptress.  While in France she met and married an American diplomat, John Wiley, in Toulon.  From there her life became an adventure.  From 1934 and 1936 Wiley was the Consul General in the US Embassy in Moscow.  In 1936 she made her first visit to the United States and Wiley was named as Consul General to Belgium where he served for one year.  From there he went to Vienna and was there when Nazi Germany took it over.  He closed the embassy there and they both helped many Jews escape the country.  In fact, they were responsible for getting Sigmund Freud out of the country.  Irena was there when the Nazi's ransacked Freud's apartment and were able to get him on a train out the country.
In 1939 she became a US citizen and was sworn in by Franklin D. Roosevelt himself.
Wiley's next assignment was Latvia and Estonia and they were there when those countries were taken over by Russia.  In 1939 the young John F. Kennedy visited them in Estonia.  She had been commissioned to do an altarpiece by the Vatican and she used Kennedy as a model for one of the angels on the piece. They were there when these countries were overwhelmed and had to escape in 1940 via the famed Trans-Siberian Express.  En route she meets the famed author, Teilhard de Chardin who entrusted her with his manuscript of The Phenomenon of Man to carry to the US.
During the war they remained in Washington D.C.  While there she did a portrait of Roosevelt which now hangs in Hyde Park, NY.  After the war Wiley serves as ambassador to Columbia, Lisbon, Tehran and Panama.  He retired in 1954 and died in 1967.
While in Tehran they became friendly with the Shah.  It was during that period of time when he had divorced his first wife because she could not provide an heir.  He jokingly told her one evening for her to find him a wife.  She took him seriously and learned of a great beauty who lived in northern Persia (Iran).  She told him of her and he checked it out.  This beauty turned out to be Soraya Bahktiari and he married her.  The marriage did not end well because there was no heir forthcoming.  He did eventually find one who could fulfill the need.  Irena told me this story herself.  She said that Soraya was a great disappointment and not a very nice person and regretted that she had set it up.  On a side note, I saw Soraya once in Bangkok.  She was on a visit to visit the Queen and was checking in at one of the posh hotels.  She actually made her entrance with two Afghan hounds and, quite frankly, was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen.
She did a sketch of me and as she was doing it said that I reminded her of a young Polish patriot who was killed when Warsaw fail.  I was smitten.
Irena was great with the troops.  She was a wonderful conversationalist and they received her very well.  Diane got to know her as well.  We took her to dinner a couple of times and we were enchanted with her.  She was very down to earth and certainly did not put on any airs.
She did 3 different USO tours and died in 1972 in Washington D.C.  I count myself extremely fortunate to have met and known this extraordinary individual.