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Richard Newberg died peacefully on Monday, April 25, 2016 in Fairfax, VA after a long illness. He was born May 23, 1949 in San Francisco, CA to the late Dr. Waldo and Helen Lucille Newberg.

He graduated from Kansas University in 1971 and worked for Peace Corps in the Ivory Coast. He earned his Master”s degree from UC Davis in International Agricultural Development. Met his future wife, Ginny VanDerMeid, on his way to the Congo to work for the Paul Carlson Medical Program. Married in Chicago, Illinois on November 25, 1978 and moved back to Africa.

Rich later joined the US Agency for International Development and had the great pleasure to experience life in Mali, Burundi, Mozambique, Peru and finished his career as the USAID Rep to the UN Agencies in Rome, Italy.

His eldest daughter, Christina, predeceased him. He is survived by his wife, Ginny and two children, Alyssa and Thomas, as well as siblings, Eric, William, Robert, Karen, Kathryn and Merete, and numerous other relatives, friends and colleagues.

Marlies Backhaus Murphy, 71, a project evaluator with the U.S. Agency for International Development from 1979 to 1993 who later founded an adoption service assisting Americans adopting children from Ukraine, died Aug. 16 at a hospital in Frederick, Md. The cause was pancreatic cancer, said her husband, Patrick Murphy.

Mrs. Murphy was born Marlies Backhaus in Uder, Germany, which became part of East Germany. She crossed the country’s border into West Berlin before the Berlin Wall was built in 1961, her husband said.

She later lived in France and England before coming to the United States. She worked at what was then the Washington Hospital Center and at the French Embassy before joining USAID. After adopting two children from Ukraine, she and her husband operated Adoption Consultants International from 1998 to 2008. She lived in Bethesda, Md., before moving to Frederick three years ago.