Archive | 2020

Kenneth Wayne Beasley, 78, passed away on December 31, 2019 from renal disease at his home in Herndon, Virginia, surrounded by family. He was born in Mitchell, Indiana and attended Purdue University from 1959 to 1963 on a full scholarship. He majored in Industrial Management. In 1963, he entered the Peace Corps as the first volunteer from Lawrence County (Indiana) and was sent to Ecuador where he organized credit coops backstopped by the Credit Union National Association (CUNA). He returned to the U.S. in 1965 and entered the Economics Graduate Program at Indiana University, obtaining a Masters in 1967 and passing PhD Field Exams in 1969. While there, he married his wife, Anne, whom he met in a Spanish class.

Prior to joining USAID, Ken worked in Venezuela and Jamaica. In 1969, he went to Venezuela with a grant from the Midwestern Universities Consortium for International Activities and a Latin American Teaching Fellowship. He and Anne drove to Panama following the Pan American Highway and had many adventures. During 10 years in Venezuela, he worked first at the Venezuelan Tourism Corporation and later as a private consultant. In 1982, he accepted a position at the Jamaica Export Credit Insurance Corporation in the Bank of Jamaica as part of a team for the Rehabilitation Fund financed by the Inter-American Development Bank. The purpose of the fund was to encourage lending to companies that had export potential based on price competitiveness.

Ken joined USAID as a Program Economist and served first in LAC/DP, backstopping Caribbean countries and subsequently in the Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Hungary and Serbia. In the DR, he worked with the government to develop and implement a comprehensive program of fundamental policy reform supported by Economic Support Funds. Within the Mission, he wrote a series of “school briefs” explaining in layman’s terms the underlying economic rationale for reforms. While Ken worked on macro policy, Anne worked on microfinance, assisting NGOs with lending programs. In Bolivia, a principal accomplishment was designing a project with the Catholic University to set up a Master’s Program in public administration, accounting and auditing. In Hungary, as Program Officer, he worked to streamline the mission’s program and support critical objectives that led to a successful close-out. The focus in Serbia from 1998-2000 was supporting democracy, especially after the Kosovo intervention. In 2004, Ken rejoined USAID as a civil service employee in PPC/CDIE where he wrote “Job Creation in Post-Conflict Societies” that was widely read. Later, he joined EGAT/EG/TIF as Senior Trade Advisor. He retired definitively in 2015.

In retirement, he was dedicated to his garden, traveling and being with his family. He is survived by his wife Anne, daughters Nicole Beasley-Becker (Kirk), Michelle Beasley, and sons Kenneth Beasley (Xiomy) and Andrew Beasley, as well as his beloved grandchildren Anthony, Alexandra and Josh.*

Daniel H. Erickson III passed away peacefully on Monday, February 17, 2020 in his home of 24 years in Sterling, VA. He was on born March 2, 1924 in Newfield, NJ and grew up in Glassboro, NJ– the son of Dorothy and Daniel Erickson.  Dan was survived by his wife of 63 years, Dorothy (Dot), his daughter Beth, son Jeff (wife Shelley), his grandsons, Rob and Jim and their wives and grandchildren.

Dan was Class President and Valedictorian from Glassboro, NJ High School in 1941 and started college at Rutgers, but soon left to volunteer in the US Navy during WW II.  He then returned to complete his undergraduate degree at Yale University in 1947.  He continued his education by attending the University of Pennsylvania law school (LLB, 1950) and NYU for international law (LLM, 1960). He retired as a Lieutenant Commander  from the US Naval Reserves on his birthday in 1984.

Dan was a corporate lawyer for Worthington Corporation (NJ) until 1967, when he established his own business– Resources Development Corporation (RDC). Wanting to utilize his education and his interest in international development, he became a lawyer for the Asian Development Bank (ADB), in Manila, Philippines in 1972 and formed the Association of Former Employees of the ADB. In 1976, Dan joined the US Foreign Service (USAID), serving in the Middle East, Africa, Pakistan and Cameroon. He retired from USAID at the age 65 and moved to Bridgeton, NJ in 1988 to be closer to his children and grandchildren, and moved again to be near them in Sterling, VA in 1996.

Wherever Dan lived, he was actively involved in/or forming Rotary Clubs. He was also an avid gardener, loved classical, patriotic and church music and was a faithful church member.

Larry Franklin Smucker, age 78, passed away peacefully on February 24th after a long fight with Alzheimer’s disease.  He was born on May 3, 1941, in Akron, Ohio, to Carl and Irene (Yoder) Smucker. Larry was highly accomplished in his education and career, graduating from both Grinnell (B.A. class of 1963) and Harvard (M.A. class of 1965). He also received a certificate degree from Princeton University. While attending Grinnel, Larry travelled with a group of 13 fellow students from Iowa to Washington D.C. in 1961 to demonstrate for the nuclear test ban treaty. At the request of President Kennedy, they were invited into the White House for a short meeting with National Security Advisor, McGeorge (Mac) Bundy. The “Grinnell 14” gathered national publicity and are sometimes described as one of the first groups to start the era of the student peace movement in the 1960s. This experience would further shape Larry’s world view and the idea of being a champion for peace and justice, reflected in his work and throughout his life.

He worked as a Foreign Service Officer at USAID in Washington, DC,  with overseas assignments in Ankara, Turkey (late 1960s)  and Lima, Peru (late 1970s). He also worked at the World Bank (1984) shortly before his first wife Joan Lubin Smucker died from cancer. He met Fauzia Rashid while both were working at the World Bank and were married in 1992.

He is survived by his wife, Fauzia Rashid Smucker, sister Mary (Smucker) Conrad, brother David Rempel Smucker, son Daniel Smucker (m. Ronica Sanders), granddaughter Sophia, daughter Julia (Smucker) Thompson (m. Courtney Thompson), grandson Lucas, son Jonathan [Smucker] Steel, step daughter, Rishm Najm (m. Taimur Amjad), granddaughter Alisha, grandson Esaam.

Funeral services will be held at the Hyattsville Mennonite Church, 4217 East-West Hwy, Hyattsville, MD, Saturday, February 29^th, 11am, followed by private interment.

He was always called Bill. He died peacefully on February 13, 2020 in Reston, VA, after a 10-month battle with cancer. He was 85 years old. At the end he said, “I want to go to Mother Nature”.

Born in Upper Montclair, NJ on November 20, 1934, his parents were Langdon and Svea Wikstrom Williams. Bill graduated from Montclair High School in 1952, and attended Upsala College for several years. Then, he joined the US Army and served in Germany. After his Army discharge, he joined the Peace Corps in 1963. In India, he taught poultry development to farmers in Ajmer, Rajasthan. There he made life-long friends.

In 1967 Bill joined the US Agency for International Development. He was Assistant Provincial Representative in South Vietnam, helping to improve the quality of life for the Vietnamese people, during the war. Returning to the States, he attended Columbia University, where he earned a Bachelor’s Degree and a Master’s Degree. Then he worked for the US Department of Agriculture, concentrating on the national school lunch program. During that time, he passed the Foreign Service exam and was employed by the US Department of State. Bill worked in Washington, DC until he was assigned to the embassy in Jamaica. Next he was assigned to the embassy in Guyana, where he met his future wife, Jean Waldron. They were married in 1989, and two years later they moved with Jean’s four children to Reston, VA. He was a loving and caring husband, and a wonderful father to her children and grandchildren.

Bill is survived by his wife, Jean W. Williams, of Reston; stepchildren, Gloria Jones of Reston; Joel Meyers of Reston; Abiola Henry of East Stroudsburg, PA; Patrick Britton of Ashburn, VA; 12 grandchildren; his sister, Betty (Billi) Gosh and her husband Bobby of Brookfield, VT; his niece, Kristina Gosh and her husband Matthew Thomas of Chicago, IL; and nephew Erik Gosh and his wife Martha of Ipswich, MA; two grandnephews and a grandniece.

Services will be held at a later date. Donations in his memory may be made to www.donate.doctorswithoutborders.org.

Francis Denis Light, known as Denis to friends and family, age 90, died on February 14, 2020 at his home with loved ones.

Denis was born in Tamworth, England, one of two children, becoming a civil engineer serving in the British Royal Engineers, constructing the famous sea walls. In 1957, he emigrated to the United States, meeting Elisabeth while working in Geneva, and marrying in Frankfurt in 1961. His children, Carolyn and Chris, were born in New Jersey while he was working for Louis Berger International. For work, he traveled in the US, Central and Latin America, Brazil, East Pakistan, and Mauritania. Later he served as a US foreign service officer with the US Agency for International Development including postings in Egypt, Kenya, and Zimbabwe, as well as frequent regional travel.

He was a friend to many, and his twinkling eyes, easy smile, and warm kindness were infectious. He loved to travel. As a young man, he bicycled from one end of the UK to the other. After retirement in ’95, he and his wife traveled throughout the world and nationally, often with friends from Canada and Florida. One of his favorite destinations was Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where annually he took his children and grandson to relive the beach times of their formative years. He was known for his generosity and fidelity to God and country. He loved to talk about his family, current events, enjoyed hosting friends and family from all over the world, and was a voracious reader. Always a friend to animals, he delighted in being in nature, adopting shelter animals and caring for the neighborhood feral cats. In his later years, he lived in King Farm, Rockville, serving as a Stephen Minister and Mason.

He is survived by his wife Elisabeth, daughter Carolyn and grandson Devon, son Chris and daughter-in-law Heather, as well as many family members from England including sister Betty (age 92), numerous nieces, nephews, grandnieces, and grandnephews.

The family will hold a remembrance service at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Gaithersburg, MD at 4 pm on Sunday, March 8, 2020.  In lieu of flowers, Denis’s family suggests that donations be given in his memory to Good Shepherd Lutheran Church Endowment Fund, 16420 S. Westland Drive Gaithersburg, MD 20877, attn: Vicki Schmidt.*

Stephen Ives, Jr. died peacefully with his wife Jean Emery at his side on February 23, 2020 in Washington DC at the age of 95. Steve was born in 1924 in New York City to Stephen B. Ives and Ellen Gardiner Atwood. He was educated at the Groton School, Harvard University and Yale Law School. During World War II, Steve enlisted in the Army and served with the Order of Battle Section, G-2, Sixth Army, in the Philippines and Japan. He was commissioned in the field as 2nd lieutenant and was awarded the Bronze Star for his direct contribution to the success of the Luzon campaign.

Steve practiced law in Providence, RI, in the early ’50’s and became involved in Democratic Party politics there. He ran the Rhode Island campaign for Adlai Stevenson and then Claiborne Pell’s successful Senate campaign. In 1961, he moved the family to Washington. There he served in the State Dept’s USAID program as part of Jack Kennedy’s “New Frontier”. Under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, he worked first on the Korea desk, Far East desk and then as General Counsel for the agency. After his government service, he was devoted to the legal profession, practicing international trade law in Washington with the firm of Wald, Harkrader and Ross.

Steve was a devoted family man, an avid tennis player, cribbage player and animal lover. He loved to read aloud — both poetry and prose. He also loved the coast of Maine and vacationed there for many summers where he could boat, chop wood, prune evergreens and birdwatch. He is survived by his loving wife, Jean Emery, his children Cathy Ives Cornell (Robert), Brad Ives (April) and Checker Ives (Sadri), his stepchildren Katrinka Choate, Christopher Choate (Cathy) and Valerian Choate. He is pre-deceased by two sons, Joshua Ives and David Ives. He is also survived by grandchildren, Willow Russell, Jack Ahmadi, Kylene Johnson, Rebecca and Adam Choate, as well his brother J. Atwood Ives, and many nephews and nieces. A memorial service will be held at a future date.

Diane M. Leach passed away on March 2, 2020. She grew up in Cheverly, MD, graduated from Regina High School, Catholic University of America and earned her Master’s degree from the University of Maryland. She was proud to have been a Peace Corp volunteer, serving in Nigeria in the late 1960s. She began her career with USAID stationed in Egypt, her favorite posting. She received her commission into the US Foreign Service from President Bill Clinton. In her younger days Diane was a camp counselor at Valley Mill camp and enjoyed kayaking, scuba diving and synchronized swimming. She was preceded in death by her parents Miriam E. Leach and Melvin H. Leach Sr.; her siblings Melvin H. Leach Jr. (and sister-in-law Gloria), Denise E. Stephenson, and Elaine G. Leach. She leaves to mourn her passing her niece Cindy S. Leach (Lin Banks), nephews Wayne E. Leach (Kamini), Michael K. Reeves (Kevin Gustafson), cousins Evelyn Hannum and Francis Krug (Betty), and her good friend Gwen Outterbridge. A memorial service will be held on Friday, March 6, 2020 from 11 AM to 12:30 p.m. at Gasch’s Funeral Home, P.A., 4739 Baltimore Avenue, Hyattsville, MD with interment to follow at Cedar Hill Cemetery, 4111 Pennsylvania Ave., Suitland, MD 20746.   www.gaschs.com

Eric Griffel, friend, colleague, mentor and one of USAID’s all-around great characters, died February 6, 2020 at home in Rockville; he didn’t want an obituary.  So, Eric, please consider this just a small celebratory note of thanks for a man with a remarkable life story.

There weren’t many like him, a Polish Jew, born in Krakow in 1930, who took the train with his mother across Germany in 1937 to England to escape the Nazis.  Pictures show him in suit and tie as a seven-year old British boarding school-boy.  It couldn’t have been easy starting from scratch with no English, surviving the London bombings (he said they were exciting), or landing in west LA for junior college looking—and sounding—like a young Alfred Hitchcock.  But in his memoir drafted at 85, he expressed no complaints. (Well actually, there were some, mostly about food.)

But, in fact, few things fazed him.  After finishing UCLA and George Washington, interrupted by a stint translating invoices for vehicle parts as a Korean War draftee in Rochefort, France, he joined the International Cooperation Agency.   He was sent off to evaluate the assistance program in Afghanistan, beginning a career with USAID which included tours in Morocco, Guinea under Sekou Touré and Katanga before it became part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  He was assigned to Nepal and became good friends with the legendary Boris, patron of the Royal Hotel’s Yak and Yeti Bar in Kathmandu, ran AID/Washington’s Nepal, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan Desk, and moved to Dacca (now Dhaka) as East Pakistan was becoming Bangladesh.  He left Dacca for a job in Policy Planning and time as a German Marshall Fellow.  Before a final tour in Morocco, he surprised friends who thought him a permanent bachelor at 43 by marrying Barbara (Bobbie) Waddington and taking on fatherly responsibility for her children, Denise and Richard.  Bobbie died in 2004.

Throughout it all, he maintained a healthy skepticism.  Above all, he was skeptical of power and authority and unafraid to question those who had it.  Most notably, as Provincial Mission Director for Pakistan in Dacca in 1971, he signed the Blood Telegram, the first cable to use the State Department’s new dissent channel, to protest Nixon’s “tilt toward Pakistan” and Pakistan’s repression of Bengalis.  (Eric’s courage and sense of justice are described well in Gary Bass’s 2013 book, “The Blood Telegram.”)  In a face-to-face meeting, Eric challenged Henry Kissinger three times, contradicting the Secretary and prompting Nixon’s exasperation at his inability to sack Eric immediately.  The framed picture of a scowling Nixon (on a shelf in Eric’s apartment) captures the moment and Nixon’s comment. The word bubble above Nixon’s head reads, “Eric, you sick bastard.” That, coming from Nixon, seemed to Eric a great compliment.

Eric loved books—as a seven-year old he worried to his father that he would run out of books to read.   After retiring from USAID, he dealt with that concern by buying and running for 15 years a (very) independent bookstore in Concord, New Hampshire, the Apple Tree Book Shop, with the motto “idiosyncratic and serious.”   The motto applied to him as well.  And one could add a number of other adjectives as well: “challenging, provocative, charming, kind, brilliant, opinionated, and puckish.”  As one friend said, “he was a great lover of food, art, literature, film, music, opera, and theater and rarely reluctant to share his well-articulated opinions on them–or anything else.”

He leaves a beloved wife, adventurous companion and patient partner, Jackie Boehme Griffel, and a multitude of step-children, grand-children, in-laws, and friends, grateful for his wit, wisdom, and a legacy of memories.

Peter John Davies was born June 7, 1927 and passed away on March 25, 2020.  Peter was a longtime resident of Riverdale and the Kendal-on-Hudson retirement home.  He attended Little Red Schoolhouse, St. John’s College and the Harvard Littauer Center and later worked for USAID in the Washington, DC, Thailand and Brazil.  He was President of the Freedom from Hunger Foundation and the first President of InterAction, the alliance of international development and relief agencies.

Peter is survived by Phyllis (nee Botner), his wife of 70 years; sister Nada Bary; sons Kenneth and Christopher; daughters-in-law Margrethe and Carina; and grandchildren Benjamin, Daniel, Lukas, Emma, Simon and Johannes.

In lieu of flowers, donations would be appreciated to Friends of Reach Out’s HIV/AIDS Africa Initiative (FORO) of which Peter was a co-founder.

Marie Angela Mastrobattista Love passed away peacefully on April 4, 2020 in Washington DC from complications of pneumonia and advancing Parkinson’s disease.  Marie was born in Farmington Connecticut on July 9, 1932 to Domenico and Josephine (Verardi) Mastrobattista, immigrants from Lenola, Italy. She attended Noah Wallace School, Farmington High School, and received a degree in business from Bryant College.  Upon graduation, she assumed a position in administration management with the Insurance Association of Connecticut. 

In 1961 Marie joined the Department of State as a Foreign Service Officer with the US Agency for International Development. She served in Libya, the Philippines and Washington DC, moving into positions of increasing responsibility in personnel management.

In 1975 Marie married Alexander Love, a fellow Foreign Service officer. From 1979 through 1982, they deployed as a tandem couple to Nairobi, Kenya where Marie handled the administrative and personnel management for four separate USAID organizations.  In 1991, Marie accompanied her husband, Chairman of the Development Assistance Committee of OECD, to Paris, France.  In 1994, Marie and her husband retired from the foreign service.  After retirement Marie assisted in her husband’s international consulting business and the establishment of a nonprofit foundation assisting development in sub-Saharan Africa.

In addition to her beloved husband, Marie leaves behind her brothers, Alexander and Rocco of Farmington, CT, and an extended family throughout the United States, Italy and Scotland. Marie was predeceased by her brother John B. Mastrobattista of Farmington, CT.

A private prayer service will be held at Joseph Gawler’s Sons in Washington, DC followed by a funeral service for family members only at St. Joseph’s Cemetary in Plainville, CT.

Donations in her memory may be made to the Michael J. Fox Foundation and the Parkinson’s Foundation, EDF or NRDC.