Author and good friend to Earle Mack, Michael Gross, penned a piece for Palmer’s latest volume featuring the U.S. Ambassadors of Palm Beach. It appears in PALMER Volume 9, Chapter 9. Below is an excerpt from the article – the passage on Ambassador Mack.
Earle Irving Mack
Ambassador Extraordinary and
Plenipotentiary to Finland
Earle I. Mack, George W. Bush’s ambassador to Finland, and a long-time Palm Beach resident, has no qualms discussing the time he “worked harder than ever in my life,” he says. “You have to be there 24/7. I was used to sleeping late!”
Working in real estate with three brothers, Mack spent his career developing and investing in over 20 million square feet of commercial space in the New York and New Jersey metropolitan area. He also toiled in the arts, culture, political policy, and thoroughbred breeding and racing, advised New York governors Mario Cuomo and George Pataki, and served as chairman and CEO of the New York State Council of the Arts, is Chairman Emeritus of the Board of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and of the Dance Theater of Harlem, and was a director of the New York City Ballet. After his family company went public, Mack looked for more ways to serve. “We’d known George W. Bush,” he says. “I supported his father. He asked me to run his campaign in New York State and we won the primary. I had tremendous respect for him and I wanted to serve. And yes, I wanted to be an ambassador.”
Why Finland? In 1977, Mack made an Oscar-nominated documentary, Children of Theater Street, about a Russian ballet school and “spent a lot of time and had good relations and a lot of experience with Russians. Finland is a most important Scandinavian country geo-politically,” due to its long border with Russia and its 250 years of experience with its rulers. “Russia was their biggest trading partner and Russians had stored a lot of money in Finland,” Mack says. But relations could be fraught. “They were always spying. You had to be aware who you hired. I did visit Russia and I had a few secret assignments I can’t talk about.” He adds that the Finns leaned left, so he took pride in “improving their relationship with Bush.”
Mack spent months preparing for the job including two weeks at what he calls ambassador’s school. “It’s vigorous work, learning about the country, the leadership, the conf licts,” he says. “You have to make sure you’re familiar so the career people respect you and don’t run your life. You report to the President, not to State, but if you piss off State, it gets back to the President. It’s not easy.” He and his wife Carol moved their family to Helsinki for two years, returning only once for a holiday trip.
Embassy entertaining “never hurts,” Mack says, “but it’s icing atop the cake. There are ambassadors who spend very little time, but he who wants a garden fair must bend his back and dig.” So, what did he take away from his 22 months as an envoy? “It’s an honor to serve your country,” he says. “It’s interesting, informative work and in that way, it’s fun. That’s the way you have to look at it. It depends on how seriously you want to take it.”