The following text is from an e-mail that Melissa wrote in 2015 to a close friend.
“I was nominated by The White House on October 7, 1986, to be the next ambassador to Mozambique. I had my Senate confirmation hearing without incident. However, trouble was expected as the State Department was aware that Senator Jesse Helms and several like-minded senators might hold up the confirmation unless the new ambassador was instructed to meet with Renamo, a group fighting the Marxist-Leninist Government of Mozambique.
Helms had not attended my confirmation hearing, but the trouble anticipated began shortly thereafter. Some questions arrived to be answered by me; more questions arrived in the following months totaling 247 – a record number.”
Michael Ranneberger, who was the charge d’affaires (the top official at the Embassy during the absence of an ambassador) at the time, recalls working 14-hour days to help draft and turnaround rapid responses to the deluge of questions which kept coming from Helms. “Through the crucible of this experience, Melissa and I had already formed a close bond before she arrived as the ambassador,” he recalls.
The blockage was widely reported in the US press.
The Economist on Helms and Wells, July 11, 1987
Wall Street Journal on Helms and Wells, June 1, 1987
Washington Post on Helms and Wells, May 5 1987
Washington Times on Margaret Thatcher and Renamo, July 20, 1987
“As the Senate summer session in 1987 was drawing to a close,” Melissa wrote in her e-mail, “the White House decided that I should meet with Senator Helms. A meeting was set up, and I was accompanied by an officer from State’s Bureau of Legislative Affairs. The Senator was gracious and after a few exchanges on policy, he told me to tell Secretary of State George Shultz that he would lift the hold on my confirmation if I were instructed to meet with Renamo.
As we shook hands to say good-bye, I would not let go of his hand and said ‘Senator, I prepared for this meeting. I read an unauthorized biography about you in which I learned that you and your wife adopted a boy with severe cerebral palsy. Senator, that takes guts!’. While I was talking, I felt Helms trying to release his hand from my grip, when I mentioned the adopted son, he took my hand and led me to the photo-covered wall of his office. ‘They said he would never finish high school; here he is graduating they said he would never finish college. Here he is getting ready for his last year’.
With tears coming to his yes – and mine too – he led me back to a chair and we discussed disabilities. I told him about my work in India in this field. Bells started to ring announcing a vote. He got up, but before scurrying away to vote, he put his arms around me, we hugged each other and kissed on cheeks.
As the Senator disappeared, my ‘nanny’ from Legislative Affairs, threw her arms up in the air saying, ‘How do I report THIS to the Bureau!’.
The second point I had read about but not mentioned was that Senator Helms in high school played the tuba in the high school band. He entered a state-wide competition. The piece he chose to play was ‘The Flight of the Bumble Bee’. He messed up several times, began again from the beginning and won the competition!
I was confirmed on September 10, 1987 – eleven months after being nominated -by a vote of 64-24.”
Melissa’s swearing-in ceremony for Mozambique was the most momentous of the four of her career. George Shultz spoke at the ceremony and made a point of holding up her hand as if she had won a boxing match. Years later, he wrote her a letter mentioning this ordeal.
The following text is from the ADST Oral History website.
“I don’t want to sound like the typical Pollyanna, but I really, truly believe that everything happens for a purpose. There is no doubt in my mind that the delay in my confirmation made me a heroine by the time I [got there].
No, there is no doubt that I was a heroine by the time I arrived. I mean, this is like Joan of Arc! Children were being named after me! The first little Melissa was born the day that the Senate voted.
The next Melissa was born the day that I presented credentials [to President Joaquim Chissano]. I kept getting pictures about little Melissas up and down Mozambique. I know of about four. Then I really didn’t answer them all. I wanted to discourage this, because there’s just so many little dresses that I could buy at this point.
But to get back to the point, had it not been for that, I would have been, I won’t say just like any ambassador, because the U.S. ambassador has a special place, certainly, in most places of the world, someone to be recognized and to be dealt with. All I was doing was upholding the administration’s policy; I was not doing anything else, but it turned me into a heroine and opened doors for me that–well, I have a lot of confidence; I think I would have opened them eventually, anyway, but, boy, did I get off to a running start! Now, please, please make it absolutely clear that I don’t want to recommend this for any other ambassador, and once is more than enough.”
Her time in Mozambique was one of the high points of her career.