The Foreign Service Journal, March 2006

Charles Wallace Adair Jr. , 92, a retired FSO and former ambassador, died on Jan. 22 in Falls Church, Va. Ambassador Adair was born in Xenia, Ohio, the second of five sons, to Charles Wallace Adair and Sarah Torrance Goulard. His family owned the Adair Furniture Store, and was actively involved in the community church, local theater, county fairs, YMCA and sports. Amb. Adair was strongly influenced by his stern, fit- ness-oriented father, and recalled spending lots of time with his father and brothers on camping and canoe- ing trips in Ohio, Canada and New England. His mother gave him a love of music, theater and people. He studied piano and organ, was the organist for Xenia’s Christ Episcopal Church, sang in musicals in both high school and college, and continued piano and singing until his death. After graduating from the Univer- sity of Wisconsin in 1935, Amb. Adair left the Midwest, determined to join the Foreign Service and travel the world. His initial job, with New York’s Chase Bank, took him to Panama, and provided his initial exposure to the international environment that was to dominate the rest of his life. In 1940 he joined the Foreign Service, and was posted to Nogales and Mexico City. He was assigned to Hangzhou in 1941, but that assignment was broken by the attack on Pearl Harbor. He was then posted in Bombay for the duration of World War II. Amb. Adair’s roommate in Bom- bay, a young military intelligence offi- cer, Coulter D. Huyler, introduced him to his cousin, Caroline Lee Marshall. She became the next major influence in his life. They married in 1947, had three children and over the next 25 years were a gracious and effective diplomatic team in posts on three continents. Following the war, Amb. Adair’s economics background was put to use by the State Department’s Economic Bureau building the new postwar international economic institutions. In 1948 he was assigned to Rio de Janeiro, and thereafter detailed to the National War College (1951-1954). He was posted to Brussels as econom- ic counselor in 1954, and returned to the department as commercial policy adviser in 1957. He served as chief of the Trade Agreements and Treaties Division until 1958, when he became director of the Office of International Finance and Development Affairs. In 1959 Amb. Adair was named deputy assistant secretary of State for eco- nomic affairs. Amb. Adair was sent to Paris in 1961 as an economic officer in the NATO mission, and served as the first deputy secretary general of the recently globalized Organization for Economic Cooperation and Develop- ment. In 1963, he returned to Latin America for a short tour in Buenos Aires, before being appointed ambas- sador to Panama in 1965. During five years there he rebuilt bilateral rela- tions from their nadir after the 1964 riots to their highest point in memory, and initiated the negotiations that returned the canal to Panama. He finished his career in Montevideo, where as ambassador he oversaw the first successful U.S. response to an organized and sustained terrorist assault in which American officials were major targets. After retiring from the Foreign Service in 1972, the Adairs took up res- idence in Stuart, Fla., where they spent 25 very happy years until Mrs. Adair’s death in 1996. From that time until his own death, Amb. Adair lived at Goodwin House in Falls Church, Va. Amb. Adair’s life was characterized by faith, discipline, humor, curiosity and love for his family, his profession and his country. He is survived by a son, career FSO and former AFSA president Amb. Marshall Adair (and his wife Ginger) of Tampa, Fla.; two daughters, Carol Finn (and her hus- band Jeffrey) of Silver Spring, Md., and Sarah Shaps (and her husband Simon) of London, England; and six grandchildren: Charles, Anna, Elea- nor, Benjamin, Caroline Lee andDaniel. Hugh G. Appling , 84, a retired Foreign Service officer, died of pneu- monia Jan. 18 at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, Va. Mr. Appling was born in Oakdale, Calif., the only child of Hugh and Mary Appling. He earned his bache- lor’s degree in biology at the M A R C H 2 0 0 6 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 75 u I N M EMORY