Shirley Temple Black

Mrs. Black returned to the spotlight in the 1960s in the surprising new role of diplomat, but in the popular imagination she would always be America’s darling of the Depression years, when in 23 motion pictures her sparkling personality and sunny optimism lifted spirits and made her famous. From 1935 to 1939 she was the most popular movie star in America. After marrying Charles Alden Black in 1950, she became a prominent Republican fund-raiser. She was appointed a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly by President Richard M. Nixon in 1969. She went on to win wide respect as the United States ambassador to Ghana from 1974 to 1976, was President Gerald R. Ford’s chief of protocol in 1976 and 1977, and became President George H. W. Bush’s ambassador to what was then Czechoslovakia in 1989. She entered the private Westlake School for Girls in seventh grade, with little idea of how to cope. After months of being given the cold shoulder, she decided she might as well be herself. She eventually spent a happy five years there. She had accepted a ring from a 24-year-old Army Air Corps sergeant, John Agar Jr., a few days before her 17th birthday. They were married on Sept. 19, 1945. They were divorced in December 1949, a year after the birth of their daughter, Linda Susan. Less than 60 days after her divorce, Miss Temple, 21, met and became engaged to Mr. Black, then the 30-year-old assistant to the president of the Hawaiian Pineapple Company. Their marriage lasted almost 55 years, until his death in 2005. A son, Charles Jr., was born in 1952; a daughter, Lori, in 1954. They survive her, as does her daughter, Linda Susan. In 1967 she ran for Congress to fill a seat left vacant by the death of the Republican J. Arthur Younger. She lost to a more moderate Republican, Pete McCloskey, in the suburban 11th Congressional District south of San Francisco. In 1969, President Nixon appointed her to the five-member United States delegation to the 24th session of the United Nations General Assembly. When she was appointed ambassador to Ghana in 1974,