The Foreign Service Journal, March 2016

82 MARCH 2016 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL IN MEMORY n Weyland Beeghly, 72, a retired For- eign Service officer with the U.S. Depart- ment of Agriculture, died at home on Dec. 10 in Omaha, Neb., after a two-month illness. Mr. Beeghly was born on April 23, 1943, in Sioux City, Iowa, to Milford and Dorothy (Graham) Beeghly. Raised on the family’s 500-acre farm near Pierson, he graduated from Kingsley-Pierson High School in 1961, attended McPherson College in McPherson, Kan., for two years and received a degree in agriculture jour- nalism from Iowa State University in 1965. He married Susan Caylor of Anderson, Ind., in 1970, and the couple moved to Ithaca, N.Y., where Beeghly graduated fromCornell University in 1972 with a master’s degree in agricultural economics. Mr. Beeghly joined the Foreign Agri- culture Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture as an analyst in the Grain & Feed Division in 1973. He and his family moved to the former USSR in 1976 where he served as the assistant agricultural attaché at Embassy Moscow. After a break to work the family farm from 1978 to 1983, Beeghly returned to the Foreign Service, where he spent the remainder of his career. He served as agricultural counselor in the former Soviet Union (1983-1986), Thailand (1986-1990), Poland (1991-1993) and India (1998- 2002). During several tours at USDA in Washington, D.C., he and his family lived in Alexandria, Va. Mr. Beeghly was diagnosed with Par- kinson’s disease in 2002 and retired from the Foreign Service in 2004. He and his wife moved to Omaha in 2011 to be closer to his daughter and sisters. Colleagues remember Mr. Beeghly as a man of many talents: a singer/songwriter/ guitarist, who wrote and performed songs about animal husbandry; a humorist and storyteller, who schooled the agricultur- ally ignorant on the exciting intricacies of plant and animal reproduction; and a gifted writer of both the prosaic and the absurd. Some members of the Foreign Service may recall his amusing correspondence and tongue-in-cheek cable communica- tions; others may recall his bovine attire at a country teammeeting in Bangkok or his booming baritone belting out a bluesy rendition of “Pig Piles in the Wintertime” at the Warsaw Embassy Follies. His family remembers him as a teas- ing, affectionate, dependable presence in their lives, a person who loved interesting dinner table conversation, brisk walks, card games with his grandchildren, musi- cal gatherings of friends, bawdy jokes, Brussels sprouts and ice cream. Mr. Beeghly is survived by his wife, Susan; three children: Graham Beeghly of Santa Monica, Calif., Laura Beeghly (and her husband, Brian Priesman) of Omaha, Neb., and Benjamin Beeghly (and his wife, Anna) of Baltimore, Md.; four grandchil- dren, Tessa and Ezra Priesman, and Milo and Mira Beeghly; and two sisters, Bev- erlee McCollum and Bonnie Nigro, both of Omaha. He is preceded in death by his parents, Milford and Dorothy Beeghly of Pierson, Iowa. In lieu of flowers, please send dona- tions to the National Parkinson’s Founda- tion. n Robert Orris Blake, 94, a career diplomat, former ambassador and sus- tainable agriculture advocate, died on Dec. 28 at his home in Washington, D.C. Born in Los Angeles, Calif., on April 7, 1921, Robert Blake grew up in Whit- tier, Calif., where Pat Nixon was his high school typing teacher. He attended Stanford University, graduating early in 1943, when he left to begin officer training as a naval seaman. He served as an officer on the U.S.S. Duluth in the Pacific. After completing a master’s degree at the John Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, he joined the For- eign Service in 1947. During a three-decade-long career, Mr. Blake served in Nicaragua, Moscow and Tokyo, before returning to Washington to head up the Soviet desk at the State Department. A Russian speaker, he served as a Soviet expert in the U.S. Mission to the United Nations during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He also served as a political officer in Tunis and deputy chief of mission in Kinshasa and Paris. In 1970 President Richard Nixon appointed himU.S. ambas- sador to the Republic of Mali, where he served until 1973. After a distinguished career in the dip- lomatic corps, Ambassador Blake began a second career in international sustain- able development. Concerned that U.S. government agencies were funding the destruction of natural resources around the world, he joined the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development as a senior fellow in 1977, heading up their advocacy work in Washington. There, he co-authored two books about actions allied nations were taking to address environmental challenges in the developing world, and organized the Tropical Forest Action Group that convinced USAID to withdraw funding for clearing tropical forests for cattle ranches in Latin America. In 1986, Amb. Blake founded the Committee on Agricultural Sustainability for Developing Countries that worked to influence the agricultural and rural development policies and programs of the World Bank, USAID and the Inter-Amer- ican Development Bank. He believed in “the absolute need to make farm- ers—especially the female farmers who