The Foreign Service Journal, January 2012

J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 2 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 69 I N M E M O R Y communities in Liberia and Somalia during the conflicts in those countries. During her husband’s tours as deputy assistant secretary for African affairs and, later, for human rights and hu- manitarian affairs, she helpedmake the spouses of visiting heads of state more comfortable at small events hosted by the wives of the president and the vice president. In addition to her spouse, Mrs. Bishop is survived by her children, Anne-Marie Wehrly and Elizabeth Pe- terson of Kirkland, Ore., and Rebecca Stumpf, of Hewitt, N.J.; her stepchil- dren, Timothy Bishop of Berkeley, Calif., Lyn Bishop of Arlington, Mass., and Melanie Briggs of Fairfield, Pa.; her parents, Bill and Ione Kirby of Meridan, Idaho; her siblings, Michael Kirby of Kent, Wash., Jim Kirby of Boise, Idaho, and Patricia Kirby of Ot- tawa, Ont., Canada; and five grandchil- dren: Elizabeth, Daniel, Hannah Kathleen, Jacob and Erin. Donations in her memory may be made to: A Space of her Own, 520 King Street, Suite 100, Alexandria VA 22314. Richard Joseph Bloomfield , 84, a retired FSO and former ambassador, died on Nov. 22 in Belmont, Mass., of complications from Alzheimer’s dis- ease. Mr. Bloomfield was born in 1927 in New Haven, Conn., to Alice and Jack Bloomfield. His father was a pioneer in industrial hygiene, performing some of the leading research on silicosis and Black lung disease. Mr. Bloomfield grew up in Wash- ington, D.C., graduating from Wood- row Wilson High School in 1945. The end of World War II cut short his serv- ice in the United States Coast Guard. Taking advantage of a program for vet- erans, he was accepted to the George- town University School of Foreign Service, graduating in 1950. He passed the Foreign Service exam in 1952 and for the next three decades pursued a diplomatic career he described as “per- sonally fulfilling, almost always chal- lenging, and at times exciting.” Mr. Bloomfield’s first overseas post was La Paz, where he served as assis- tant to the agriculture attaché and was eventually promoted to political officer. Over the next three decades, he as- cended the ranks of the Foreign Serv- ice with postings in Austria, Brazil, Mexico, Uruguay and Washington, D.C., and was appointed ambassador to Ecuador in 1976. Two years later he was appointed U.S. ambassador to Por- tugal, where he served until 1982. As the U.S. envoy to Ecuador, Am- bassador Bloomfield helped that coun- try move from military rule to democracy, winning the State Depart- ment’s Superior Honor Award for his performance. He arrived in Lisbon soon after the nonviolent overthrow of the autocratic Salazar regime during the Carnation Revolution, which ush- ered Portugal into the nascent Euro- pean Union. During a 30-year career, Mr. Bloomfield also served as deputy di- rector of the Office of Regional Eco- nomic Policy (1964-1967), desk officer for Ecuador and Peru (1967-1968), economic counselor and USAID asso- ciate mission director in Brazil (1968- 1971) and director of the Office of Policy Planning and Coordination in the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs (1972-1976). Between postings, he earned a mas- ter’s degree in public administration at Harvard University in 1960 and was awarded a fellowship at Harvard’s Cen- ter for International Affairs (1971- 1972). There he wrote what came to be known as one of the most authorita- tive and most frequently quoted un- published papers on U.S.-Latin Ameri- can relations of the 1970s. (The De- partment of State refused permission to have the paper published.) Upon retirement from the Foreign Service in 1982, Mr. Bloomfield be- came executive director of the World Peace Foundation, an international af- fairs research institute established orig- inally as the International School for Peace in Boston by the late publisher Edwin Ginn. During his tenure at WPF, Mr. Bloomfield published three books: Al- ternative to Intervention: A New U.S.- Latin American Security Relationship (1990), Regional Conflict and U.S. Pol- icy: Angola and Mozambique (1989), and Puerto Rico: The Search for a Na- tional Policy (1985). After retiring from the WPF in 1992, he became senior visiting fellow at The Watson Institute for Interna- tional Affairs at Brown University. Mr. Bloomfield took great delight in teach- ing his young protégés the nuances of foreign policy and in exhorting them to take the viewpoint of people of foreign lands. At the end of a career that spanned almost five decades, he re- turned to Harvard University as an af- filiate at the Center for International Affairs. The nattily attired Bloomfield was an oenophile who would often smile at the Catholic prayer, “Fruit of the vine, work of human hands,” during the Liturgy of the Eucharist. His love of fishing, food, wine, music, cinema and humor was infectious. His later years were devoted to family and to writing his memoirs at his home in Cambridge, Mass., with summers at Martha’s Vine-