Herve Alphand; French Envoy to U.S. Under Kennedy

Herve Alphand, 86, France’s ambassador to the United States during the John F. Kennedy Administration. The son of a career diplomat, Alphand studied law and political science and was an economics attache at the French Embassy in Washington at the outset of World War II. He became director of economic affairs in Charles de Gaulle’s government-in-exile in London and later in Algiers. Alphand served as French ambassador to NATO from 1950 to 1954 and to the United Nations in 1955 and 1956. He was ambassador to the United States from 1956 until 1965, and with his glamorous late wife, Nicole, made the French Embassy a major Washington social center during Kennedy’s presidency. Alphand returned to France in 1965 as secretary general of the French Foreign Ministry and remained in that post until he retired in 1972. He was a member of France’s prestigious Legion of Honor and wrote his memoirs under the title “The Astonishment of Being.” On Thursday in Paris.