Walter A. Leonard

U.S. Chargé d'Affaires Walter A. Leonard (Eesti Filmiarhiiv)

Walter Anderson Leonard was born on August 3, 1880, in Essex, Iowa, to Levin and Ida Anderson. He graduated from business school and did commercial work in 1900 and 1901. In 1903, he received his bachelor's degree from the University of Nebraska. He then pursued post-graduate studies at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, as well as at universities in Frieburg and Baden in Germany. From 1905 to 1906, Leonard taught high school.

Leonard joined the U.S. Consular Service on August 2, 1907, and was assigned in quick succession to both cities in Germany where he had studied. He became Vice and Deputy Consul at Freiburg and then was transferred after a few months to serve as Vice and Deputy Consul at Kehl in the German state of Baden. Leonard resigned from the U.S. Consular Service a few months later to head the commercial department at a high school and manage a bookstore.

Three years later in August 1912, Leonard reentered the U.S. Consular Service and was assigned as U.S. Consul at Stavanger in Norway. On July 24, 1914, he was named U.S. Consul to Colombo in the British colony of Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka) where he served until June 1920. Leonard then served in Washington, D.C. in the State Department's Consul Commercial Office, which was part of the Office of the Director of the Consular Service. In July 1922, he was appointed U.S. Consul in Stockholm, Sweden. Three years later, he was named U.S. Consul at Warsaw, but only served there two months. He transferred to Bremen in Germany to serve as the U.S. Consul there for the next ten years.

On December 28, 1935, Leonard returned to Stockholm as the U.S. Consul General. After a year, he was appointed U.S. Consul General and First Secretary at the U.S. Legation in Tallinn, Estonia. While serving in Tallinn, he married an Estonian citizen named Elfriede (Elix) Leetperk on August 19, 1940 (born October 27, 1903 in Vihula) several weeks before the U.S. Legation to Estonia was forced to close.

Leonard retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in 1941 and returned to the United States. During World War II, he served as a consultant on Scandinavia, Spain, and Switzerland for the Office of Economic Warfare. The war ended in 1945, and that December Leonard began working for the Department of Commerce's Office of International Trade. He died in Washington on January 30, 1955 and was buried in his birthplace of Essex, Iowa.

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