State Department Portrait To Caribbean American Unveiled
December 10, 2009
CaribWorldNews, WASHINGTON, D.C., Thurs. Dec. 10, 2009: An official portrait to the U.S.` first black secretary of state, Caribbean American Gen. Colin Powell, was this week unveiled at the State Department.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton unveiled the official portrait of former Secretary of State Powell on Monday, noting there were few Americans as admired and celebrated.
`There`s an elementary school named after him in Virginia, there`s a couple more named after him in Texas,` Clinton told a crowd in the State Department`s Benjamin Franklin Room. `A middle school in Illinois. A street in Gelnhausen, Germany, where Second Lieutenant Colin Powell reported for duty 50 years ago.`
Powell, the son of Jamaican immigrants who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the first Gulf War, said the large oil painting done for the State Department was not the first portrait of him to adorn a government building.
`I have an official portrait at the Pentagon in the Hall of Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,` he said, noting it was done during the Clinton administration when Vice President Al Gore was doing a reinventing government program.
`And so it is an 8-by-10 glossy that has been blown up,` he said to laughter. `So help me, it`s an 8-by-10 glossy that I do like, and it was blown up to full size, put in a frame, and hung on a wall.`
Powell, the 65th Secretary of State, was surrounded his immediate family — wife Alma Powell, daughter Linda Powell, son Michael Powell, daughter-in-law Jane Powell, two of his four grandchildren, cousins and other extended family from New York.
`I consider it one of the greatest honors and privileges I have ever had in my life to have been given the opportunity to be the secretary of State and to lead the wonderful men and women of the State Department as they go about their work,` said Powell. `And I thank each and every one of them from the bottom of my heart, and I thank President Bush for having given me that opportunity.`
`I remind myself of this every day as I think about my parents,` he added, referring to his Jamaican immigrant parents, both deceased. `I think about the great diversity that is America. What a wonderful country God has given to us . . . and what we have done with it is remarkable, and the best is yet ahead as long as we remain open, as long as we touch the rest of the world.`
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