Charles S . Whitehouse Charles Sheldon Whitehouse ( November 5 , 1921 – June 25 , 2001 ) was an American career Foreign Service Officer . He was U . S . Ambassador to Laos and Thailand in the 1970s . Early life . Whitehouse was born November 5 , 1921 in Paris , France , the son of American parents Mary Crocker ( née Alexander ) and Edwin Sheldon Whitehouse ( 1883 – 1965 ) . His father was a Foreign Service officer , and served as U . S . Minister to Guatemala , 1930 – 33 , and to Colombia , 1933 - 34 . Charles Whitehouse was a great - grandson of railroad executive Charles Crocker , and a grandson of Charles Beatty Alexander and Harriet Crocker . He was also a great - grandson of Henry John Whitehouse , Episcopal bishop of Illinois . He was raised in Europe and South America . U . S . Marine Corps . In 1942 , he interrupted his studies at Yale University , where he was a classmate of William F . Buckley , to join the United States Marine Corps . He attended Navy flight school and became a Marine dive bomber pilot and saw combat in the Pacific theater , where he was awarded 7 Distinguished Flying Crosses and received 21 Air Medal s . After his separation from the Marine Corps in 1946 , he reentered Yale University . In 1947 he was tapped as a member of the Skull and Bones Society . Government career . Upon graduation from Yale in 1947 , Mr . Whitehouse joined the Central Intelligence Agency and worked in the Congo , Turkey , Belgium and Cambodia . He moved over to the State Department in 1956 to serve as Assistant to the Undersecretary for Economic Affairs , and in 1959 he became a regular Foreign Service Officer . He later served as the State Department ' s Congo Desk Officer , and also served on the staff of the Department ' s Office of Personnel . He attended the National War College , and graduated in 1966 . Following a tour to the Republic of Guinea , 1969 – 1970 , as Deputy Chief of Mission , Mr . Whitehouse served two tours of duty in Vietnam . During his first tour , he was Deputy for Civil Operations and Rural Development Support . He returned to Washington in 1971 to become Acting Assistant Secretary for East Asian Affairs and returned to Vietnam in 1972 as Deputy Ambassador under Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker . In September 1973 , Mr . Whitehouse became Ambassador to Laos , his first of two ambassadorships . In Laos he oversaw decreasing American military aid to Hmong who had been fighting a proxy war against Communist forces ( Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese Army troops ) in northern Laos . Eight months after Mr . Whitehouse left Vientiane to take up his new post as Ambassador to Thailand in Bangkok in April 1975 , the Communists seized power and proclaimed the Lao People ' s Democratic Republic . Mr . Whitehouse ' s arrival in Bangkok coincided with a crisis in United States - Thai relations that followed the collapse of South Vietnam , and which was aggravated by the Marine recapture of the SS " Mayagüez " , an American ship that Cambodian Communist gunboats had seized in the Gulf of Thailand . It was also a time of serious political unrest in Thailand , which culminated in the bloody suppression of student demonstrations on October 6 , 1976 , and a military coup that overthrew the elected government shortly thereafter . Mr . Whitehouse presided over the closing of the last American bases in Thailand in 1976 , an action the Thais had requested . He also oversaw the creation and management of the resettlement camps in Thailand that helped refugees from the wars in Vietnam , Laos and Cambodia resettle in the U . S . and other countries . In addition to his military decorations , Mr . Whitehouse received the State Department ' s Superior Honor Award , the Agency for International Development Distinguished Honor Award , and the State Department ' s Distinguished Honor Award . He was also a member of the French Legion of Honor . Later years . After his retirement from the Foreign Service in August 1978 , Mr . Whitehouse served as President of the American Foreign Service Association and Chairman of Lycée Rochambeau of Bethesda , Maryland . He later became Chairman of the Piedmont Environmental Council in Warrenton , Virginia and was instrumental in blocking the Disney Corporation ' s efforts to build an amusement park and other developments on and near historic lands in Northern Virginia . In 1988 , Mr . Whitehouse was called out of retirement by Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci to become the first Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations / Low Intensity Conflict & Interdependent Capabilities , with the assignment of strengthening cooperation among Army , Navy and Air Force after a series of disagreements and botched operations . He served in this position until 1989 . Mr . Whitehouse became a joint master of foxhounds of the Orange County Hunt in The Plains , Virginia , in 1990 . He served in that capacity until his death . Mr . Whitehouse was tall , elegant and regal - looking , and in 1966 the Washington Post named him one of the " Ten Most Attractive Men in Washington . " He was an excellent off - the - cuff speaker and raconteur , and he had a flair for the theatrical that continued into his retirement . He played George Washington in a documentary on the general , and once played the Marquis de Lafayette in a Fauquier County Historical Society ceremony commemorating Lafayette ' s 1825 visit to Warrenton , Virginia . Personal life . Mr . Whitehouse ' s first marriage to Molly Rand ended in divorce . From this marriage , he had two sons , Sheldon Whitehouse and Charles Whitehouse , and a daughter , Sarah Whitehouse Atkins . He married a second time , to Janet Ketchum Grayson . He died June 25 , 2001 at the age of 79 of cancer at his home near Marshall , Virginia .