Archive | 2019

Ann Fitzcharles (nee Alspach) passed away peacefully on August 8, 2019. Born on March 22, 1925 in Philadelphia to Russell and Catharine, her career with the U.S. Foreign Service took her to India, Egypt, Haiti, and the Philippines. She was the first single mother with USAID to live in an overseas posting with dependents. She will be remembered for her love of travel and diverse experiences, her sense of humor, her oft-demanding ways offset by her generous spirit, her amazing memory, her dedication to good grammar and punctuality, and her disdain for complaining. She was predeceased by her son Andrew (survived by his wife Khim) and is survived by her sister Sara Anderson; her children Uma, Kevin, and Leslie; her grandchildren Josef, Nadia, Marieta, and Ian; and her great grandchildren Na’im and Abigail. If she were here now, she would tell us all to drink a glass of wine and quit worrying so much. May you rest in peace, Ann.

In the early morning of October 24, 2019, Walter Gene Rockwood, 91, of Hartland and Chelsea, Vermont, joined the predeceased loves of his life–Beverly Alyce (Kenyon) Rockwood (1930-1999) to whom he was married for 50 years and Jean Peterson (1933-2013) with whom he spent 13 years. Walter (aka Rocky or Walt) was born on September 28, 1928 on the Bowers homestead in Hartland.  He grew up on the family dairy farm and graduated from Windsor High School in 1945, where he courted Beverly.  At the end of WW2, he served briefly in the US Navy. Walter and Beverly were married on September 11, 1948 and he attended and graduated from the University of Vermont in 1950 with a degree in agriculture.

In 1963, Walter, along with Beverly and their four children (3-11) began his “journey” in the foreign service with USAID in Togo, then in Guinea and Morocco until 1968.  After earning his Masters’ Degree in Agricultural Communications at the University of Illinois in 1970, he worked at the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Nigeria for several years, a year in Iran working for the United Nations, followed by many years at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines.  His final years in Africa were in the Cote d’Ivoire as part of the Food for Peace program, but he worked part time with IRRI remotely until around 1998.

He retired in 1988 and settled on Redrock Farm in Chelsea where he established a choose-and-cut Christmas tree farm.  He was active in the Vermont-New Hampshire Christmas Tree Association, the Vermont Senior Guard, Alumni Associations from IITA and IRRI, and the Chelsea community.

A gathering to celebrate Walter’s life will be held at Knight Funeral Home in Windsor, VT on November 23, 2019 from 1:00 to 2:00 pm, with a short prayer service at 2:00 pm.  Condolences may be expressed to his family in an online guestbook at www.knightfuneralhomes.com.

Jesse L. Snyder, age 85 passed away Oct.7, 2019 in Bakersfield, CA.   Mr. Snyder served in the US Navy from 1951-1955. He was a Foreign Service Officer with USAID from 1966-1990. He was posted in Viet Nam, Washington DC, Ethiopia, El Salvador, Niger, and Lesotho. Following his retirement he consulted with the OFDA to provide relief in Macedonia, Sierra Leone, Niger and Northern Iraq. He and his wife, Carol retired in Bakersfield, CA where he volunteered at the Bakersfield Homeless Shelter and spent time enjoying his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

The father of USAID Senior Foreign Service Officer Alex Dickie, Alexander Dickie III, died at home in Austin on Nov. 17.  He was 94.  Alex was born on June 15, 1925, and lived on the Dickie Ranch, founded in 1900, in Throckmorton County, Texas.  He grew up in Woodson roaming the land and working with his father.  He was one of 17 first cousins.  When he was 13, the family moved to Denton, where his father was registrar at North Texas State College.  Alex attended Austin High for a year when his father was there finishing his PhD in Education.  He attended Texas A&M, graduating in the Class of 1946.  During college, he entered the Marine Corps as a 2nd Lieutenant.  He spent a year in China in the 1st Division, 5th Regular, 2nd Battalion.  He later earned a master’s degree in economics at North Texas State University.

He married Marilyn Monroe of Denton on March 1, 1950.  Between 1951 and 1966, they had seven children.  They ranched and farmed in Denton County, where he also taught school.  He served as president of the Texas Farmers’ Union from 1955 to 1961 and as vice chair of the Democrats of Texas.  In 1961, the family moved to Washington, D.C., where Alex was Administrative Assistant to U.S. Senator Ralph W. Yarborough (TX).  He later worked in the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson.  He was a life-long Democrat.  He was appointed by President Johnson to serve as Assistant Administrator for Legislative and Public Affairs, in the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).  In 1969, the family moved to Nairobi, Kenya, where he served as the Senior Agriculture Development Officer for East Africa (Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania) with USAID.  He later served as USAID’s Mission Director in both Sierra Leone and Guyana, returning to the U.S. in 1985.  He retired in 1990 after 35 years of government service.  In retirement, he farmed and ranched in rural Virginia and on the family land in Throckmorton County.  He lived by his principles, worked hard and was kind and respectful to everyone he encountered, including the horses he rode and the great family pets we had over the years.  He had grand adventures and fun as he went along.

Alex is survived by his wife, Marilyn, seven children (Sarah Todd, Mary Dickie, Alex Dickie IV, Martha Dickie, Joe Dickie, Carolyn Lewis and Kate Supron), 14 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

James Otis Wright, Jr., 75, passed away on November 15, 2019 in McLean, Virginia. He was born to James Otis Wright Sr. and Alice Croom Wright on August 23, 1944. Jim’s career in international development began as a Peace Corps volunteer in Bolivia in 1967. He was inspired to join the Peace Corps after hearing President John Kennedy’s speech at the  University of Michigan in 1960 establishing the Peace Corps. His interest in other cultures began when he participated in the Youth for Understanding program in Germany in high school. He graduated from Cranbrook in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, in 1962, and the University of Michigan with a B.A. in economics in 1966. He received his M.A. in economics from Georgetown University in 1972 before joining the USAID Office of Housing and later went on to the UN as an associate economist in Zambia. He subsequently joined PADCO, Inc. as a senior economist before joining the World Bank in 1980 in the Urban Projects Division.

Jim is survived by his wife of 44 years, Betty Louise Wright; his children, Betsy and Jim Wright; daughter-in-law, Emily Sartor; grand-children, Jackson and Henry; sister, Betsy Jacobus and her husband Clay Copeland; and sister-in-law and brother-in-law Bimi and Bob McGough. He is also survived by his niece, nephews, cousins, and many devoted friends.

Thomas Ivers, a USAID agriculture officer, passed away on October 18, 2019 in Auburn, Alabama.  He is survived by Joyce, his wife of fifty years.  They had no children.  Tom attended the University of California (Santa Barbara) as an undergraduate student and joined USAID in 1970.  Their first assignment was Brazil, followed by a tour in the Dominican Republic.  After his second tour, he returned to school where he attained a PhD degree in aquaculture at Auburn University.  He then rejoined USAID with assignments in Sudan, Costa Rica and Guatemala followed by a teaching stint at Auburn and a final year in USAID/W.  He retired in 1993, moving with Joyce to northern Alabama, where they bought a 150-acre property and built their own home.  Tom also took up consulting work and focused significantly on local conservation programs, including starting the nonprofit Save Our Sagahatchee.  He was a big fan of Auburn’s football team and an avid fisherman in local rivers.  A few years ago, Tom had a stroke which led to gradual decline, but he still retained his great sense of humor.

Bob Rucker, in son Malcolm’s words, “crossed the finish line” on December 5, 2019 in the adobe home he had built with his own hands in Santa Fe.  “He seemed happy.”

And well he deserved to be.  He had managed his death as he’d lived his life—on his own terms. Last year, after battling various forms of cancer for some 15 years, he chose to abandon the well-worn path between Santa Fe and MD Anderson in Houston.  He had beaten back the disease multiple times and finished what he most wanted to do in life: taking care of his wife Barbara.  He had crafted them a house from scratch where she flourished with elegance, grace and a steady stream of hand-loomed scarves and shawls; he had nursed her carefully and patiently through a year of ALS; and he had left to USAID a legacy of designs for economic policy reform which set a standard for clarity and collaboration.  He’d won the fight.

He was always his own man.  Born in a small town in Kansas in 1941, he left home while still in high school and worked his way through Oklahoma State and UCLA.  He married Barbara Layton three weeks after spotting her on the OSU campus.  Together with Malcolm, age 5, they joined USAID’s class of International Development Interns in 1969.  Posted to India as a program economist, he worked on a tubewell project for Bihar, before heading for tours in Syria and Egypt.  Fed up with bureaucracy, he left USAID to return to UCLA and then launched his nearly life-long project of perfecting the house on the Little Critter Ranch just south of Santa Fe. He advised the New Mexico Energy Commission on policy before coming back to USAID in 1984 as an economist in Jakarta, where he produced his classic work on employment.  Working closely with a senior economist, Boediono, later Minister of Finance and Vice President, he orchestrated a design process that brought together key members from across the government and academia in a series of seminars which captured their imaginations.  It laid the groundwork for a program of collaboration and consultation which continued for three decades—supported first by USAID and later picked up by the World Bank and USAID.

It was an approach which Bob used repeatedly–including counterparts key to project implementation in the design of programs.  And he did it with the same patience, creativity, and attention to detail that he used in crafting his house in Santa Fe.  You couldn’t hurry him.  His work took time.  He was meticulous and his projects built to last.

Along the way, he developed his own methodical style of brewing coffee, watched humming birds under the portola, indulged a love for green chili burritos at the San Marcos Café, and thrashed at his computer, looking out the windows on the scrub land and mountains beyond, dreaming of how to make things better.  He shot off enlightened and instructive e-mails advising on how to shape up our political institutions—one suggested that feeding certain politicians to the Komodo dragons might help. He signed off on these notes as ET, El Terrible, and began embracing the role of monk-curmudgeon sending messages from his den on righting the world.  Towards the end, he said, as he surveyed the lists on his post-its, “there’s still much to do, but now I don’t have to do it.”  He found comfort in that.  He’s left the charge to us.

Lewis P. Reade, of Placitas, New Mexico, died on December 17, 2019, attended at bedside by his family, following a long illness. He was 87.

Lew Reade was born on November 1, 1932 in Brooklyn, New York, to Dorothy and Herman Reade, and spent his high school and college years in Miami, Florida. He graduated from the University of Miami in 1953 with a degree in mechanical engineering. Following graduation, he served in the United States Army stationed at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds, where he worked on the development of atomic cannons. After his military service, he held a number of field engineering positions, and in 1966, Mr. Reade became Vice President of Westinghouse Learning Corporation. In the early 1970s, he was a senior executive at Tyco Laboratories and Kellett Corporation.

Starting in 1973, Mr. Reade devoted his career to public service. That year, he became CEO of Big Brothers Association and, in 1977, presided over its merger with Big Sisters International, a women-run organization, to form Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. In 1981, he entered the Foreign Service as a senior officer in the United States Agency for International Development, where he remained until his retirement in 1997. During his distinguished career at USAID, he served as Mission Director in Kingston, Jamaica; Jakarta, Indonesia; and Amman, Jordan. He also was the first Director General of the US-Asia Environmental Partnership. After retiring, Mr. Reade consulted in the international development field for various clients and participated actively in the greater Albuquerque community. He volunteered on the boards of the local Big Brothers Big Sisters and Civitan International organizations, among others.

Mr. Reade was an avid lover of the arts and local history and was especially fond of classical music. Among his last words were, “I love Mozart.” Friends and colleagues describe him as “a great gentleman and compassionate leader,” “a leader and champion of Big Brothers Big Sisters,” “insightful, determined, and always interested,” “a great man [whose] work supporting the emergence of free markets and economic growth throughout the developing world will always be remembered,” and “a kind and engaging man with incredible ability, wit, knowledge and strong character.”  He is survived by Margaret Ann (Peggy), his wife of 51 years, three sons, four grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, and many other loving family and friends.

James Thomas O’Meara, known as Jim, died December 18, 2019 at age 76. He was born September 25, 1943 in Chicago to Irish immigrants. After graduating from DePaul University, he joined the Peace Corps and went to the Philippines, where from 1965 to 1967 he used construction skills that had helped pay his college tuition to supervise the building of a rural schoolhouse, library, and clinic.

He then joined USAID and went to Vietnam, 1967 to 1969. While he never spoke of his war experience, his daughters learned after his death that he helped defectors from the North survive in the South and received the State Department’s Award for Heroism in 1968 “for courageous action while under fire in Vietnam.” In 1983, USAID gave Jim its Distinguished Honor Award “for sustained distinguished service in personally resolving controversial legislative issues regarding the Caribbean Basin Initiative and United States assistance to El Salvador.” As Acting Director of the Food for Peace Office from 1990 to 1992, he helped get shipments of food to Ethiopia and Djibouti more quickly to those who needed it. Jim moved to the US Agriculture Department in 1992 and retired in 1999 as Director of the Emerging Markets Office of the Foreign Agricultural Service.

Outside work, Jim focused on his family, friends, and community. He renovated one house, built another, and always helped neighbors in need. He led the Brookmont Civic League’s negotiations with the US Army Corps of Engineers to stop a sludge treatment plant from harming the neighborhood.  After September 11, 2001, Jim chose to tear out invasive kudzu vines that had been destroying native trees in and around his neighborhood, commenting in an October 2002 Washington Post article the following:  “Slashing and uprooting seemed more appropriate responses than those being recommended at the time — shopping, for example.”

Jim leaves behind his wife of 51 years, Clare Lefebure O’Meara, daughter Megan Elizabeth O’Meara, daughter Molly and son-in-law Joe Sheehan, and grandsons Charles and William Sheehan. In lieu of flowers, you may donate online here .

Due to the pandemic, Jim’s memorial service is now set for Saturday, April 23, 2022 at 11 am at Our Lady of Victory Church in Washington, DC.  Friends will be able to find details about how to participate remotely on this virtual memorial site.

Neal passed away peacefully on December 22, 2019. Neal is survived by his beloved wife Jean LeDonne Goodson; his children, Lisa Dady (John), William Goodson Jr. (Wendy) and Robert Goodson (Catherine); and his sister Nancy Parrott (Maynard). He was also the kindest and gentlest grandfather to his seven grandchildren who adored him.

His education included Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech, Business Administration at George Washington University and studies at the Foreign Service Institute.  Neal spent over 20 years as a career foreign service officer with the US Agency for International Development serving in various capacities related to Urban Development and assuring that US assistance for low income housing adhered to government standards. Throughout his tenure serving in Jamaica, Argentina and Kenya, Neal was known for his gracious approach and ability to bring varying cultures and opinions to common ground. His empathy across all levels of professionals and recipients of the low-income housing projects resulted in respect and gratitude for the work of USAID and the United States as well. Neal was loved and respected by both the host country leaders and the US Ambassadors that he worked with in each of his posts.

While his storied career made him many friends, it was his relationship with his family that was most important to him. Neal enjoyed working in the garden, scuba diving and being near the ocean.

A memorial service is planned at Goodwin House Baileys Crossroads on Saturday, February 8, 2020 at 1 p.m. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the , Grace Episcopal Church in Alexandria or to the Goodwin House Foundation in Neal’s name.