Eugenie Anderson; Ex-Envoy to Denmark

Eugenie Anderson, 87, the first woman ambassador to represent the United States. When President Harry S. Truman named Anderson ambassador to Denmark in 1949, she quickly learned Danish and rode a bicycle like most Danes, making her very popular with the Danish people. State Department records also show that Anderson was the first woman to sign a treaty binding the United States when she completed a trade and navigation agreement with Copenhagen. She served in Denmark for four years. Later Anderson became the first woman chief of mission in an Eastern European country when President John F. Kennedy sent her to Bulgaria in 1962. Before her work in Denmark, Anderson had no diplomatic experience. But she was influential in Minnesota politics; she had helped Hubert H. Humphrey organize the merger of the state’s Democratic and Farmer-Labor parties in the 1940s and served as Minnesota’s Democratic national committeewoman. In 1968, Anderson was a special assistant to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and in 1975 she served as U.S. representative to the United Nations Trusteeship Council. On Monday in Red Wing, Minn.