The Foreign Service Journal, June 2007

in information and technology man- agement, he had a bachelor’s degree in political science from Providence College, R.I., and a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard University. His career included ser- vice in the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the De- partment of Education, the White House (Executive Office of the Presi- dent), the U.S. Information Agency and the Foreign Service, with diplo- matic assignments in Poland, Argen- tina and Uruguay. Until his death, Mr. Duffy was director of information management for the Department of Social Services in Cecil County, Md. He became a persistent and dedicated patient advo- cate for persons diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia and served on the board of directors of CLL Topics, a nonprofit group of vol- unteers drawn from the community of CLL patients and caregivers. Mr. Duffy was a member of the Elkton Rotary Club and the American Legion. He also served on an adviso- ry committee on gifted education for the Oxford Area School District and an auditor for East Nottingham Township, Pa. Survivors include his wife of 24 years, Jennifer Salinger Duffy; chil- dren Christopher William Duffy of Ottawa, Canada, Mary Fitzgerald Duffy of South Hadley, Mass., and Caitlin Salinger Duffy and Liam Pat- rick Duffy, both of Oxford, Pa.; grand- sons Anthony and Gregory Duffy; and sisters Mary R. “Jini” Fairley of New- ton, Mass., and Kathleen E. Pannozzi of Providence, R.I. Mr. Duffy was preceded in death by his parents and a brother, Robert C. Duffy Jr. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to CLL Topics (www.cll topics.org/ ) or the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Beverly Gerstein , 77, a retired Foreign Service Reserve officer with the U.S. Information Agency, died on April 9 at her sister’s home in Scottsdale, Ariz. She had suffered from Parkinson’s disease and Alz- heimer’s disease. Born in New York, Ms. Gerstein graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1950 and then worked in public relations in New York before joining the American National Thea- tre and Academy’s International Divi- sion. At that time, ANTA adminis- tered the nation’s cultural exchange program for the State Department. When the program was transferred to the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs in 1967, Ms. Gerstein moved to Wash- ington, D.C. (In 1978 the program became part of USIA.) Ms. Gerstein arranged officially sponsored tours abroad for American artists as part of USIA’s Arts America Program. She organized tours for the Paul Taylor Dancers, the Martha Graham and Alvin Ailey dance groups, the New York City Ballet, Charlie Byrd’s jazz trio, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the National Theater of the Deaf, among others. Ms. Gerstein retired in 1994. She subsequently volunteered with the Friends of the Kennedy Center and with Suited for Change, a program that provides professional clothing and vocational guidance to low- income women. In 2006, she moved to Tennessee to live with a niece, and then to Scottsdale to be with her sister, her only immediate survivor. Elizabeth J. “B.J.” Harper , 86, a retired FSO, died on April 22 in Dumfries, Va. A native of Oklahoma, Ms. Harper served in the Army Women’s Air Corps during World War II. From the Philippines she went to Japan with U.S. occupation forces at the end of the war, serving there for two years. Ms. Harper returned to the U.S. in 1949 to attend The George Wash- ington University, graduating and join- ing the Foreign Service in 1952. Her first assignment was as a consular offi- cer in Medan, Indonesia. From there she was sent to Japan, where she served for about 10 years, including language training, with postings in Tokyo, Osaka-Kobe and Naha. In 1965, Ms. Harper transferred to the Visa Office in Washington as deputy chief of the Regulations and Legislation Division. There she pre- pared material on projected admis- sions under what became the 1965 Immigration Act; the legislation abol- ished the national origins quotas and established a worldwide system, a ver- sion of which we still have. In 1969, she become chief of the Field Operations Division, and within the next two years went to the VO front office as deputy director for policy. Barbara Watson, then head of the Bureau of Security and Consular Affairs (as CA was called at that time), relied on Ms. Harper’s technical expertise; then and later she testified before congressional committees as an expert witness and as the principal State Department witness. During this period, Ms. Harper also started her work on the third edi- tion of Immigration Laws of the United States (Bobbs-Merrill, 1975), and became an active member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Among a handful of peo- ple who had a thorough understand- ing of the arcane intricacies of the system of numerical limitations on immigration, she was unique, friends recall, in her ability to make it com- 68 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U N E 2 0 0 7 I N M E M O R Y