Anne C. Martindell | Former ambassador, 93

Anne C. Martindell, 93, who entered politics in her 50s, found true love as ambassador to New Zealand in her 60s, earned a college degree in her 80s and published a memoir titled

Never Too Late

in her 90s, died Wednesday in Princeton.

Her memoir describes a pampered but miserable childhood, beginning with her birth in the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan.

Her sickly, mentally unstable mother, the former Marjory Blair, had inherited a railroad fortune. Her cold and distant father, William J. Clark - an alcoholic, she later discovered - was a prominent lawyer who in 1938 became a federal appeals court judge.

Her birth, her breeding and her iron-willed father seemed to have condemned Ms. Martindell to a life she later dismissed as utterly conventional - "I didn't do anything real until I was 50," she once told a reporter - but feminism and the 1960s changed all that.

Racing to make up for lost time, she carved out a career in New Jersey politics, serving as a state senator in the 1970s, and held posts in President Jimmy Carter's administration, including that of ambassador to New Zealand.

Her memoir was published last month by Boxed Books.

During her three years as ambassador, Ms. Martindell fell in love with New Zealand - and with one New Zealander in particular, Sir Mountford Tosswill Woollaston, a landscape painter better known as Toss, whom she later called "the love of my life." He died in 1998.

Her devotion to New Zealand outlasted her tenure as ambassador. In 1986, disturbed at deteriorating relations between the United States and New Zealand, which had banned U.S. nuclear submarines from entering its waters, she founded the U.S.-New Zealand Council to foster closer ties and better understanding. The council is still in operation.

- N.Y. Times News Service