“Out here’ refers to Gowrie, a town of just more than 900 people, where there can’t be many, if any, other people who worked in international business and as a diplomat who rubbed shoulders with larger-than-life 1960s and 1970s people such as President Lyndon B. Johnson and Henry Kissinger.

Anderson, 94, recounted years overseas with his family of seven where he prepped advance party details for LBJ ahead of a trip to Berlin, traveled on Air Force One, and had dealings with the Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation.

He said it was fascinating work. But things he witnessed also made Anderson increasingly jaded.

“I found there was so much cheating in the political world, it was everywhere,” he said.

-Submitted photo
George and Eleanor Anderson have been married for 72 years.

Way before that time, Anderson was born to parents Clarence and Wylma (Knapp) Anderson in spring 1930 in Nebraska. Then, starting in 1938, he lived all over west central Iowa, first in Denison, then Lytton, tiny Yetter and to Gowrie by 1942.

“I had come from a very Democratic labor family,” he said. “My Dad was a butcher, he headed up a labor council.”

Anderson recalled the 1940s days when Black people from places like Chicago would visit Fort Dodge, but no hotel operators would let them stay. So his father would have him sleep on the couch so the visitors could have his bed.

“My family was always religiously and racially very liberal,” Anderson said.

Upon graduating from Gowrie High School in 1947, with future wife Eleanor as a classmate, he left for one year of college in the south. He got super involved, such as being in 27 performances of “MacBeth.” After that year, thinking about pursuing journalism, Anderson transferred to the University of Missouri.

-Submitted photo
George and Eleanor Anderson, of Gowrie, sit down for a meal at a restaurant in Belgium. They spent decades in Europe throughout his diplomatic and business career.

But sensing he could not graduate in four years, he soon shifted to the major of diplomatic history before graduating and going into the military. A Fulbright Scholarship to the University of Copenhagen in Denmark followed for the 1952-53 school year, and the international travel bug dug its way into Anderson. He loved learning about European history and international trade and business patterns.

“I stayed out of this country for as long as I could,” he said.

On a trans-Atlantic voyage over nine days, he used the time to read two books that resulted in the final work for a second degree from the U.S. Naval Academy. From there, Anderson’s work in such agencies as the U.S. State Department ensued, after passing his second test to enter the foreign service field in 1958.

“I had never flunked an exam in my life,” he said. “I was surprised.”

He worked for the State Department and the federal government from 1957 to 1980, before exiting at age 50. By that time, he and Eleanor were raising five children — Travis, Miles, Greta, Jon and Grant — who lived all over the world with him except for two and a half years when he was in South Vietnam in the late 1960s during the height of the war there. That was a period when they attended Gowrie schools, with the rest of their education culminating in Europe.

-Submitted photo
George and Eleanor Anderson, of Gowrie, pose on their wedding day 72 years ago.

Three of the Anderson boys attended Yale University, one attended Stanford University and daughter Greta graduated from Carleton College in Minnesota.

A son once told George Anderson, “We all five agree that we could never have had a more perfect childhood. We traveled, we learned languages, we skied.”

“They ended up having remarkable lives,” Anderson said.

That all came while he did such tasks as editing daily top secret briefings for President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Then he began working for the new administration of President John F. Kennedy in 1961. Anderson said Kennedy made several international relations missteps in his first six months, then righted the U.S. course.

“Kennedy learned fast, he was the fastest learner I ever saw,” Anderson said.

-Submitted photo
George Anderson poses in a Navy uniform.

By 1963, he was a Labor Department attache, which he enjoyed more. There, Anderson worked with such luminaries as U.S. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, of New York, and Kissinger and came to know labor union national President George Meaney.

“That was the first time I had seen election corruption … I was just shocked,” he said.

During a 1970s trip by several U.S. senators to Europe, Anderson met current President Joe Biden and he was not impressed by him.

For much of the 1980s, Anderson was vice president of the United Technologies Corp. Europe, growing revenues by $1 billion and up to 47,000 employees. Later, he was on the ground floor for videophone sales in Europe and the Middle East.

He and Eleanor moved back to Gowrie in 1995, at first splitting time between there and a South Carolina beach home, but for the last dozen years living fully in the Webster County town. The Andersons have been married 72 years.

Among many awards, Anderson was bestowed with a Meritorious Civilian Service Medal by the U.S. Secretary of Defense, which is the highest honor a civilian in that department can receive.

Looking back on his life, he said “Working in all these things, you learn a lot about people. Some of them are humorous, some are sordid, It really made a cynic of me.”

“My main takeaway is how much the government keeps away from the people,” he added. “The Labor Department was a big disappointment. The federal government, every agency is bloated. I can’t see how the federal government can help anything.”

Anderson admitted he’s a far cry politically from his younger days as liberal. He is worried about the November 2024 presidential election outcome, saying Republican former President Donald Trump definitely has no collusion with the Russian government.

“I am pretty jaundiced,” Anderson said. “I am afraid for the country. Why ruin the best damn country in the world? I am very pessimistic.”