The Foreign Service Journal, March 2019

76 MARCH 2019 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL designed to bring the benefits of the uni- versity to small towns across Wyoming. In 1983, at the age of 55, she attained her lifelong dreamof becoming a Foreign Service officer with the U.S. Department of State. She was posted to the Middle East, Europe and Africa. She retired in 1993, but continued to deploy for temporary assign- ments with State. When she and her husband returned to Laramie, she became active in the Wyoming State and Albany County Demo- cratic Party, volunteering thousands of hours over the years. Mrs. Peters traveled frequently; she especially enjoyed Europe and journeyed there many times with friends and family members. Betsy Peters is survived by her daugh- ters Elizabeth Peters Bierer (and spouse, Michael), and Sidney Peters; her son, Robert Mitchell Peters; and grandchil- dren, Kyle Stevenson Peters, Cedric Oliver Peters, Isaac Oliver Bierer, Liliana James Bierer and Sarah Bo Abigail Peters. The family is very grateful to Kimberly Shep- herd for her excellent care of Mr. andMrs. Peters for the past three years. Donations can be made in Betsy Peters’ name to the Albany County Library Fund or the Cathedral Home for Children. n Harry Shlaudeman , 92, a retired Foreign Service officer and former ambas- sador, class of Career Minister, died on Dec. 5, 2018, in San Luis Obispo, Calif., of congestive heart failure. Mr. Shlaudeman was born onMay 17, 1926, in Los Angeles, Calif., and spent his early years in SanMarino, Calif., with a five-year detour to Palo Alto, where his father earned a Ph.D. at Stanford Univer- sity. At the age of 17, he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps, shipping out to the Pacific Theater in November 1944, and later serv- ing with the Marine divisions that were deployed to northeastern China to disarm and repatriate more than 600,000 Japanese soldiers. After the war, Mr. Shlaudeman attended Stanford University, graduating with a B.A. in English literature in 1952. While at Stanford, he reconnected with a classmate from South Pasadena High School, Carol Dickey, and they were married on Aug. 7, 1948. Mrs. Shlaudeman graduated from Stan- ford that same year, and for the next four years was the breadwinner in the family while her husband pursued his degree. After graduating, Mr. Shlaudeman worked as a real estate salesman and property manager in Palo Alto, a trainee at Union Bank in Pasadena and a credit man- ager at Richfield Oil Co. in Los Angeles. Feeling restless and experiencing the wanderlust that would follow him to the end of his life, Mr. Shlaudeman entered the Foreign Service in 1954, asking to be posted to Africa because, while he had been to the other continents, he had never been there. However, on arriving inWashington with his orders for Durban, South Africa, in hand, he was told that the vice con- sul assigned to Barranquilla, Colombia, refused to go, so he went there instead. After Barranquilla, he served as a politi- cal officer in Bogotá (1956-1958), studied Bulgarian at the Foreign Service Language Institute in 1959 and went to Sofia as vice consul (1960-1962), his only post outside of Latin America. In 1962 he was declared persona non grata (PNG) in Bulgaria in retaliation for the U.S. expulsion of a Bulgarian diplomat at the United Nations. He was then assigned to the Dominican Republic as chief political officer, and in 1964 returned to the State Department as Dominican desk officer, a position he held when President Lyndon Johnson sent the Marines and 82nd Airborne Division into Santo Domingo to intervene in the Domin- ican Civil War in 1965. For the 18 months he was Ellsworth Bunker’s principal adviser, and also worked closely withMcGeorge Bundy during political negotiations to establish a provisional government in that country, draft a new constitution and hold demo- cratic elections. In addition to the Dominican crisis, Mr. Shlaudeman played a key role dur- ing some of the most controversial and contentious episodes in the history of our relations with Latin America, including the rise and fall of Allende in Chile, the nation- alization of U.S. oil interests in Venezuela, the Falklands War and the negotiations to end the Contra war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. He served as the U.S. ambassador to Venezuela (1975-1976), Peru (1977-1980), Argentina (1980-1983), Brazil (1986-1989) and finally Nicaragua (1990-1992), for which he came out of retirement at the personal request of President George H.W. Bush. Other positions included special assis- tant to Secretary of State Dean Rusk (1967- 1969), deputy chief of mission in Chile (1969-1973), deputy assistant Secretary of State (1973-1975), assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs (1976- 1977), executive director of the Bipartisan Commission on Central America, chaired by Henry Kissinger (1983-1984) and President Ronald Reagan’s special envoy to Central America (1984-1986). Ambassador Shlaudeman was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedomby George H.W. Bush in 1992. Amb. Shlaudeman and his wife retired first to Georgetown and later to San Luis Obispo, Calif., where they bought a home on the 18th fairway of the San Luis Obispo Country Club.