John Peurifoy

John Emil Peurifoy (August 9, 1907 – August 12, 1955) was an American diplomat, an ambassador in the early years of the Cold War. He served as United States ambassador in Greece and Thailand and was the United States Ambassador to Guatemala during the 1954 coup that overthrew the democratic government of Jacobo Arbenz.

Peurifoy was born in Walterboro, South Carolina on August 9, 1907. His family of lawyers and jurists traced their New World ancestry to 1619, two years before the arrival of the Mayflower. His mother Emily Wright died when he was six, and his father John H. Peurifoy died in December 1926. When he graduated from high school in 1926, the yearbook recorded his ambition to be President of the United States. Peurifoy won an appointment to West Point in 1926. He withdrew from the military academy after two years because of pneumonia.

He worked for a time in New York City as a restaurant cashier and then as a Wall Street clerk. He went to Washington, D.C. in April 1935 in the hopes of working for the State Department. He operated an elevator for the House of Representatives–a patronage job he got through South Carolina Congressman "Cotton Ed" Smith–and worked for the Treasury Department. He attended night school at American University and George Washington University.

Peurifoy married Betty Jane Cox, a former Oklahoma schoolteacher, in 1936. When he lost his job at Treasury, he and his wife both worked at Woodward & Lothrop department store.

Peurifoy identified himself as a political liberal and was a lifelong Democrat, because, he said, "You're born that way in South Carolina. It's almost like your religion."

He joined the State Department in October 1938 as a $2000 a year clerk and 8 years later was earning $8000 a year as assistant to the Under Secretary of State.

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