Adamkus, Valdas V.

Adamkus, Valdas V.
▪ 1999

      In 1997 Valdas Adamkus retired from his post at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) after nearly 30 years—the longest tenure of any senior executive at the agency—with the expressed intention of working on his golf game. Soon afterward, however, it seemed that golf would have to wait, because in February 1998 the unassuming 71-year-old career bureaucrat, a citizen of the United States for the past half century, became a European head of state. A month earlier after a closely contested election, he had won a five-year term as president of his native country, Lithuania, where he had only recently regained citizenship. His candidacy had generated considerable controversy; opponents painted him as an interloping American-made carpetbagger, whereas supporters viewed him as a prodigal son, long an exile in a foreign land, completing his odyssey back home.

      His absence during the Soviet era may have helped Adamkus gain his victory. "I don't carry any political baggage," he declared. "I don't represent any old systems." His winning margin during the election, decided by a runoff, was less than 1%, only a few thousand votes, but it was enough to defeat Arturas Paulauskas, who was backed by the popular outgoing president, Algirdas Brazauskas, a former communist. As president, Adamkus announced his intention to give up his U.S. passport but not his ties to the West. In fact, he worked to strengthen those bonds by continuing in force the two main objectives of Lithuanian foreign policy: eventual membership in NATO, in order to improve national security, and in the European Union, to improve the economy. All the while, Adamkus was careful not to alienate his nation from Russia and its Baltic neighbours; he met with Polish and Ukrainian leaders in May and with the other presidents of Eastern and Central Europe in June.

      Adamkus was born with the surname Adamkavecius in Kaunas, Lith., on Nov. 3, 1926. During World War II he fought with Lithuanian insurrectionists against Soviet rule, published an underground newspaper during the Nazi occupation, and then resumed the fight against the returning Soviet army before fleeing in 1944 to Germany, where he attended the University of Munich. In 1949 he immigrated with his family to the United States, settling in a Lithuanian-American community in Chicago, where in 1960 he graduated from the Illinois Institute of Technology with a degree in civil engineering. Adamkus was active in émigré politics in the 1950s and 1960s, promoting Lithuanian independence and cultural heritage and achieving high positions in such organizations as the liberal Santara-Sviesa ("Accord-Light"), the Lithuanian Community in America, and the American Lithuanian Council.

      Adamkus began his career with the EPA upon its inception in 1970, and in 1971 he was picked to be the deputy regional administrator of Region V, in the Midwest. Ten years later he was appointed to the position of regional administrator. Adamkus distinguished himself by improving the water quality of the Great Lakes with a model program that gained international repute, by crafting groundbreaking agreements with Native American tribes, and by refusing to participate in an EPA cover-up regarding the unlawful emission of chemical toxins. Most far-reaching perhaps was his work in helping to address and solve environmental protection issues in Eastern Europe by supplying consultation and infrastructure.

TOM MICHAEL

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Universalium. 2010.

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