The Foreign Service Journal, February 2005

Jean Phillips Cootes , 82, the widow of FSOMerritt N. Cootes, died at her home in Princeton, N.J., on Nov. 24. Born in Portland, Ore., Jean Cootes attended the University of Oregon, graduating Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in music. She then began a promising career in govern- ment service, working in postwar Germany in the Foreign Service and on the staff of General Lucius Clay with the United States Occupation Forces. In 1946, on a mission to Moscow, she met her husband-to-be, Merritt Cootes, a Princeton graduate and ris- ing Foreign Service officer from Virginia. After a wedding in Paris, the couple proceeded to postings in Trieste, Karachi, Algiers and, finally, Florence, where Mr. Cootes served as consul general for eight years (from 1958 to 1966). At each posting, Mrs. Cootes studied the language of the country — Italian, French and Urdu — and she also continued her serious study of the piano. In Florence, she orga- nized countless receptions and musi- cal recitals in the consulate’s 19th- century palazzo on Lungarno Vespucci, introducing young American musicians, artists and scholars to the best Italy had to offer. The years of the Cootes consulate, which coincided with the first flush of postwar prosperity in Italy, are still remembered as a golden period in Florence by the many Americans and Italians who knew the couple. Following Merritt Cootes’ retire- ment in 1966, the couple moved into a restored farmhouse in the hills outside of Florence called “Il Palagetto,” and for 19 more years American musi- cians, art connoisseurs and historians mingled with Italian aristocrats, orchestra conductors and museum directors at Mrs. Cootes’ dinner par- ties. Mrs. Cootes was also active in flood relief efforts, in the American Church in Florence and in the Amici della Musica. In 1986 the Cooteses returned to the United States, to a home near Princeton University that became another gathering place for leading musicians, composers and artists. Merritt Cootes died in 1998. Mrs. Cootes is survived by a sister, Barbara Phillips Ford, and a brother-in-law, Dr. Peter Ford of Portland, Ore.; three nieces, Anne Ford Matthews of Stonington, Conn., Bronwyn Ford Rhoades of Mendocino, Calif., and Paula Ford Ciecielski of Eugene, Ore.; and four nephews, Harry Belin of Washington, D.C., Marcus Ford of Flagstaff, Ariz., Eric Ford of Seattle, Wash., and John Ford of Snohomish, Wash. Marion Dudenhoeffer Hinke , 96, a retired FS member and the widow of FSO Frederick William Hinke, died Nov. 27 at Silver Oak Manor in Livermore, Calif. Mrs. Hinke was born in Erie, Pa. She worked in Washington, D.C., at the Division of Labor Statistics of the Department of Labor from 1934 to 1945, and then joined the clerical staff of the State Department. As a secretary in the Foreign Service, Mrs. Hinke traveled the world. In Lisbon she served as an assistant in the office of the ambas- sador. She was appointed secretary and administrative assistant to the counselor of the embassy, and worked on the evacuation to Japan during the Korean War. Upon her transfer to Paris in 1952, she served as secretary to the deputy special assistant for major defense acquisition programs. While in Paris, she met and mar- ried FSO Frederick William Hinke in 1953. She retired from the Foreign Service, and accompanied him to Monrovia. When her husband retired from the Foreign Service in 1958, the couple settled in Santa Barbara, Calif. They both attended classes at the University of California, Berkeley. After her husband’s death in 1960, Mrs. Hinke moved to San Francisco. There she graduated from the Rudolph Schaeffer School of Design 66 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 5 I N M EMORY

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