Christopher Van Hollen Sr.

Christopher Van Hollen Sr. (September 23, 1922 – January 30, 2013) was an American member of the United States Foreign Service who served as the United States Ambassador to Sri Lanka and the Maldives from 1972 until 1976.^[1] He was the father of U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland.^[2][3]

Van Hollen was born in Baltimore, and was raised in the city's northern Cedarcroft neighborhood.^[2] His mother, Cecilia Harvey (Coale), was a secretary for the League of Women Voters, while his father, Donald Beauchamp Van Hollen, worked for the Baltimore Gas and Electric Company, before joining the family's seafood business.^[2][4] Christopher's grandfather, George Henry Van Hollen, owned the Atlantic Packing Co.^[2] The Van Hollen family, the namesake of Baltimore's Hollen Road, helped to develop the Cedarcroft section of North Baltimore.^[2]

He graduated from Baltimore's Gilman School preparatory school in 1941.^[2] He briefly attended Haverford College in Pennsylvania, but left to enlist in the United States Navy in 1942 during World War II. He was honorably discharged as a lieutenant for a naval transport ship at the end of the war.^[2] Van Hollen re-enrolled at Haverford College following World War II and received a bachelor's degree in 1947.^[3] He next earned a doctorate in political science from Johns Hopkins University in 1951.^[3] He also graduated from the Naval War College and completed academic studies at the University of California, Berkeley.^[2] While studying at Johns Hopkins, Van Hollen worked as the campaign manager for congressional candidate Leo McCormick in his Democratic primary challenge against incumbent U.S. Rep. George Fallon in 1948.^[2] Rep. Fallon easily dispatched McCormick in the primary.

Van Hollen married Edith Eliza Farnsworth, a CIA Russian studies expert at the time, in 1953. Eliza Van Hollen later became a noted specialist and chief analyst on Afghanistan within the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the U.S. State Department.^[2][5]

Van Hollen joined U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson's executive secretariat shortly after completing his doctorate at Johns Hopkins.^[2] He attended the NATO Ministerial meeting in Lisbon in February 1952, which admitted Greece and the host nation, Portugal, into NATO.^[2]

He was posted as a political officer at the U.S. embassy in New Delhi, India, in 1955. He also received postings in Calcutta (now Kolkata), Pakistan and Turkey.^[2] He was appointed deputy assistant secretary for the Near East and South Asia in 1969.^[2] In 1971, he openly disagreed with National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger's handling of the Bangladesh Liberation War, which led to Bangladesh's independence.^[2]

He was appointed as U.S. Ambassador to Sri Lanka and the Maldives in 1972 by President Richard Nixon.^[2]

In 1980 he published a widely quoted article, titled "The Tilt Policy Revisited", about the handling of the 1971 crisis in South Asia in the journal Asian Survey.^{[citation needed][6]}

Christopher Van Hollen died from Alzheimer's disease on January 30, 2013, at the Washington Home and Hospice in Washington, D.C., at the age of 90.^[3] His wife, Eliza, died in 2007.^[5] He was survived by three children, then-U.S. Rep. Chris Van Hollen, Caroline Van Hollen, and Cecilia Van Hollen; two sisters, Margaret Lee of Baltimore and Cecilia Van Hollen; and five grandchildren.^[2]