Archive | 2015

Tim Seims

Tim Seims, who joined the Family Planning Services Division of the USAID Office of Population in 1980, died on March 31, 2015, in a hospice near his home in West Virginia. The cause of death was congestive heart failure. Tim served as Population Officer in USAID/Cairo and in Bolivia. He is survived by his son, Joshua Seims, and two granddaughters, Zoe and Sophia.

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Lucy Leidy

Lucy Ruth Leidy, beloved Sister of Ruth Mielke of Fanwood New Jersey, and Mildred Ho of Honolulu, Hawaii, passed on to be with Our Lord on Monday morning, February 16, 2015, at 4:18 A.M., after a long hospital stay.

Lucy was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, on August 28, 1919, and was a long — time resident of Cranford, New Jersey before moving to Holiday, Florida, and later, Inverness, Florida.

Lucy worked overseas in Korea, Egypt, Turkey, and Pakistan for the United States Department of State, Agency for International Development ( USAID), from which she retired as an Executive Secretary.

Lucy loved traveling throughout countries in the Middle East and Far East. She also loved to travel, on occasion, to Las Vegas, Nevada. Lucy also enjoyed swimming and relaxing in the Gulf of Mexico on Fort Myers Beach, Florida.

Lucy also loved playing bingo and was a frequent winner. She could play 13 — 20 cards at one time and still keep a sharp eye on your cards to be sure that you didn’t miss a number.

Lucy survived her Father, Edward Leidy, and her Mother, Ruth Leidy of Cranford, New Jersey, as well as her Sisters Evelyn Kiewra of Inverness, Florida, and June Johnson of Holiday, Florida. She also survived her Brothers Edward Leidy of Cranford, New Jersey, and Emerson Leidy of Elizabeth, New Jersey and a Nephew, Jimmy Leidy, of Elizabeth, New Jersey.

Lucy leaves behind her Sister Ruth Mielke of Fanwood, New Jersey, Brother-In-Law Robert Mielke of Fanwood, New Jersey, Sister Mildred Ho of Honolulu, Hawaii, Brother-In- Law Edwin Ho of Honolulu, Hawaii, Brother- In- Law Donald Johnson of Holiday, Florida, and Sister- In- Law Gertrude Leidy of Elizabeth, New Jersey. She also leaves behind Nephews Wayne Mielke of Wellsburg, West Virginia, Ken Mielke of Henderson, Nevada, David Johnson of Willow, Alaska; Nieces Lynn Southwick of Cape Coral, Florida, Brenda Gorman of Middletown, New Jersey, Debra McCrossan of Brick, New Jersey, Janice Weber of Edison, New Jersey, and Robin Karlovitch of Indialantic, Florida, together with numerous grandnephews and grandnieces, and special neighbors and good friends Joanna DesFonds and her family of Inverness, Florida.

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Gordy Straub

Gordon “Gordy” Straub passed away, unexpectedly, on March 31, 2015 at his home in Virginia. He was a distinguished FSO who served with USAID for 16 years in Nicaragua ,Guatemala, Honduras and in the E&E Bureau in Washington before retiring in 1997.

Gordy had a successful 30 year career as an international development specialist. He began his USAID career in Nicaragua in 1980 as an International Development Intern and moved on to become the Deputy Director of the Office of Rural Development and Natural Resources in Honduras and later the Director of the Regional Office of Agriculture/Natural Resources in ROCAP and in the bilateral mission in Guatemala. He served for four years as the Director of the Productive Resources Office in El Salvador and later became the Senior Environmental Policy Adviser for the Bureau for Eastern Europe and New Independent States until 1997. Gordy also was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala in the Western Highlands from 1970-1972.

After leaving USAID in1997, he became a Principal Associate with ABT Associates where he served in many capacities including Project Director and Principal Adviser for a USAID Agribusiness and Trade Competitive Program in Mozambique and other projects in Central America, Dominican Republic, and the Ukraine.

He held a B.S. in International Studies and a M.A. in Agricultural Economics/Public Policy from the University of Wisconsin.

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Al Smith

Dwight Alan “Al: Smith passed away on April 30, 2015. Husband of Katherine Norden-Smith, of Darnestown, Maryland and brother of Susan Smith Shockey of Annandale, Virginia, Al was born in 1953 in Van Wert, Ohio to Rae Mouser Smith and Dwight E. Smith. He held a B.S. degree from Georgetown University, School of Foreign Service and a M.S. in Agricultural Economics from The Ohio State University.

Al was a U.S. Diplomat for 30 years, serving as an Agricultural Economist and Program Development Officer with USAID. A specialist in African affairs, he spent over 20 years posted overseas, including assignments in Burkina Faso, Rwanda, Malawi and Kenya. Interment will be in Columbus, Ohio.

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Don McClelland

Donald G. McClelland, a longtime resident of Arlington, Virginia died peacefully on June 14, 2015 after living with Parkinson’s disease for a decade. He is survived by his wife Mary McClelland, daughter Gillian McClelland, son-in-law Jeff McClelland, and 2-year-old granddaughter Miriam. 
 
Originally from Hastings, Nebraska, Don graduated from Grinnell College (’64) with a degree in economics prior to serving as a volunteer in the U.S. Peace Corps in India, where he met lifelong friends and became interested in international development. He subsequently earned a M.S. from the University of Massachusetts (“68) and a Ph.D from the University of Pennsylvania (’73). 
 
Don’s professional interests and expertise focused on international food security, promoting agricultural production, and evaluating the effectiveness of U.S. government foreign assistance investments. He worked for over thirty years as an economist and policy advisor for the United States Agency for International Development, including two years as an agricultural officer in Kenya. 
 
He will be remembered for his gentleness, precision, integrity, thoughtful demeanor, passion for puttering, and unwavering commitment to his family.
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Herb Adelman

Herbert Adelman (Age 82) was born May 26, 1932 and died May 20, 2015 after a brief illness. He is survived by his loving wife of 58 years, Betty Adelman; his children, Rachel, Paul, and Jennifer; eight grandchildren; and a brother, and three sisters.

Herb attended the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. After graduating, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy and served as a radio officer during the Korean War, on the U.S.S. McNair, Herb then completed his education at the Columbia Law School. He clerked for Judge Stanley Fuld of the New York State Supreme Court, and then practiced law in New York City.

Attracted to Washington, DC by the Kennedy administration’s Alliance for Progress, he worked in the Agency for International Development’s General Counsel’s Office and in its Latin America Office of Capital Development. He then pursued a private international practice at the law firm Cameron, Hornbostel, and Adelman.

During his first retirement, in the early “80s, he taught U.S. law at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC He returned to law practice as a class-action litigator, successfully representing, with co-counsel, people whose health insurance rates were improperly raised, and then insurance agents who were denied promised permanent health insurance benefits. He continued to work as a class-action litigator for people who needed his strong will and determination. In his last case, he successfully worked with other attorneys to obtain compensation for retirees who had unknowingly invested in a Ponzi scheme run by the CEO of a chain of assisted living facilities.

Although retired (again) at 81, he continued to help people examine the merits of their cases and to find legal representation, especially for claims involving denied health insurance benefits. He was an avid hiker, skier, and kayaker. He loved good friends, good food, and good conversation. He made lifelong friends from a single ride up a snowy mountain in a chairlift with a stranger. Above all, Herb loved and was greatly loved by his family.

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Julie Phillips

Julie T. Phillips, 59, a certified public accountant who retired last year from the Government Accountability Office, died June 12 at her home in Arlington, Va. The office of the chief medical examiner of Virginia said she died of a gunshot wound to the chest. The death was ruled a suicide.

She was born Julie Sindelar in St. Louis and relocated to Washington in 1984. She worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development before joining the General Accounting Office in 1991. She attended Cherrydale Baptist Church in Arlington, where she sang in the choir and participated in women’s ministries. She hosted a Bible study group in her home.

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Barbara Rodes

Barbara K. Rodes, 76, an information director for the World Wildlife Fund in Washington from 1985 to 1997, died June 6 at an assisted living center in Boston. She had Alzheimer’s disease, said her husband, Thomas Rodes.

Mrs. Rodes, who moved to Boston from Garrett Park, Md., in 2011, was born Barbara Knauft in Cincinnati. Early on, she was library director of what is now Johnson College in Scranton, Pa., and the information director of the Environmental Law Institute in Washington. She joined the Conservation Foundation in 1980 and moved to the World Wildlife Fund when the organizations merged in 1985.

In addition, she was a project coordinator for the U.S. Agency for International Development from 1993 to 1996 and helped provide resources to libraries in Central and Eastern Europe. She co-wrote “A Dictionary of Environmental Quotations” in 1992.

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Jeanne North

The obituary below was written by Charles North, Jeanne North’s son:

My mother, Jeanne Foote North, passed away last Wednesday, July 8. She was 90 years old.

On June 28, while in the hospital, she had decided – with her usual perfect clarity of reason and determination – that it was time to let her body go. She spent the next ten days at home in hospice care enjoying visits and calls from family and friends reminiscing about the wonderful times they had had together. She had calls from Vietnam, Mexico, Liberia, Louisiana, and California. She charmed and built friendships with the hospice nurses and nursing aides who took care of her – as she did with everyone all her life: telling stories, sharing a laugh, and caring for those who cared for her.

From an early age, mom was a fierce advocate for racial and gender equality – from a speaking tour on racial equality in 1930s Alabama, her home state, to advocating in the early 1970s for the rights of women divorced or widowed by their Foreign Service husbands. She had an adventurous spirit that led her to teach school in post-war Hawaii (Kauai).

She later traveled with her husband/my father, Haven North, on his assignments with Point Four and USAID to Ethiopia (1952-1957), Nigeria (1961-1965), and Ghana (1970-1975). My sister was two years old when they went to Ethiopia; my brother was born in Ethiopia; and I was less than a year old when we moved to Nigeria. To ensure we had good schools to attend, she was a founding board member of the American International School of Lagos and Chair of the Board of the Lincoln Community School in Accra. She also served on the boards of the Opportunities Industrialization Centers and the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). She applied her Masters in Medical Social Work (Columbia U.) to many issues: working as a social worker in Presbyterian Hospital in NYC, introducing social work concepts to nursing students in Ethiopia, conducting one of the first Women in Development studies for USAID in Ghana, working with young women in the Job Corps program in Washington, D.C., and, through NAMI, counseling families dealing with mental illness.

She joined USAID in 1976 as a Civil Service Social Scientist; rising to become a GS-15, she focused on institution building, development management. and policy reform. She designed and managed the Implementing Policy Change program, based on social work principles that emphasized the central role of the people and governments of developing countries in leading their own development, with donors and consultants playing a facilitative and supporting role. That project shaped, and continues to influence, the thinking of many development practitioners.

With retirement, she dedicated more time to social causes, to the church, and to her art. She studied painting at the Yellow Barn at Glen Echo Park and livened our walls with beautiful portraits and landscapes. She and my father had a wonderful, loving marriage that lasted almost 65 years. She was a devoted mother and grandmother and my mentor and role model. We will all miss her.

We will hold a memorial service for her at Bethesda United Methodist Church on July 26 at 2:00 for those who would like to attend.

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Al Furman

Al Furman died peacefully on July 15, 2015 at the age of 83 in his home in Deerfield Beach, Florida after a long battle following multiple hip replacement surgeries.

He dedicated his life to helping others less fortunate than himself working first with the United States Agency for International Development and then with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. His postings included Dhaka Bangladesh, Port-au-Prince Haiti, Rome Italy, Kingston Jamaica and Sana’a Yemen.

He is survived by a loving wife Sharon to whom he was married for 35 years. He is also survived by eight children, Brad, Michelle, Allyson, Scott and Christopher, Susan Black, Amy Purcell, Sean Purcell, 11 grandchildren, his brothers Ed and Grant and his sister Marge and many nieces and nephews. He will be sorely missed for his sense of humor, his love for his wife and children and families and his passion for woodworking.*

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