People

By Richard Lacayo

Though his travels have taken him to Moscow, Paris and Peking, there is one less celebrated spot with a special meaning for Henry Kissinger: Spartanburg, S.C. It was there in 1943 that the former Secretary of State became a naturalized U.S. citizen after entering the Army to fight against Germany, from which he had fled five years earlier. Kissinger, 62, was back in Spartanburg last week to tell the graduating class at the University of South Carolina that his naturalization was "the greatest privilege of my life." He also took to task some of his former colleagues at Harvard, where he once taught. "They had a tendency to take every American imperfection as an excuse for an assault on everything this country stands for." After the speech, he was presented with a replica of a local newspaper's account of that long-ago step into citizenship; Kissinger was listed among 350 foreign-born servicemen who became new Americans that day in a small Southern town. Did his visit to the scene of old Army days bring back any tearful recollections? Not quite. As Kissinger told his audience, "If any of you have tried to dig a foxhole in the red clay of South Carolina, you won't have too many nostalgic memories of it."