At age 16, Estes left Maine, and his childhood sweetheart Ruth Fullerton, to live and work with his aunt and uncle Fanny and Joseph Coombs in Worcester, Massachusetts.

[1] In early 1938 Estes received an honorable discharge from the Marines to join the United States Foreign Service as a clerk and was assigned to the legation in Bangkok, Thailand under American Minister Edwin L. Neville and Holbrook "Chappy" Chapman.

During this time Estes participated in the inspection of POW camps by the Swiss and was designated a "Special Naturalization Examiner."

At the end of this vacation Estes was told that he was to attend the Harvard Business School's three-month Advanced Management Program.

While in Quebec Estes met the former Queen Sophia of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire who was living in a Roman Catholic convent.

In 1950 Estes was relocated back to Washington and posted to the State Department to handle assignments of staff to several countries in Europe.

During this time Estes began a long road to a college degree by taking classes at American University.

In September 1951 Estes' wife gave birth to a son, Stuart, in the Seventh Day Adventist hospital in Silver Springs Maryland.

The JAS was directly or indirectly supported by AID - an economic and military assistance program designed to block the advance of Communism.

Estes performed inspection tours in areas where the U.S. was engaged in active projects to help restore the Greek economy and to preclude Communist infiltration and obstruction to the AID efforts.

In 1961 Estes was nominated as United States Ambassador to Upper Volta by President John F. Kennedy and was confirmed by the Senate.

On November 21, 1963, Estes and Charles Darlington were the last White House appointments [2][3] before Kennedy's assassination the next day in Texas.

He left the post in Upper Volta on July 13, 1966, and for two years Estes served as the State Department Advisor to the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.

[4] In 1973 Estes received the college diploma, a bachelor's in Political Science from the University of Rhode Island.

On December 29, 2001, Estes died of congestive heart failure in the Freedom Village Nursing Center in Bradenton, Manatee County, Florida.