The Foreign Service Journal, March 2021

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MARCH 2021 87 If you would like us to include an obituary in In Memory, please send text to journal@afsa.org. Be sure to include the date, place and cause of death, as well as details of the individual’s Foreign Service career. Please place the name of the AFSA member to be memorialized in the subject line of your email. children, Susan of Bluffton, S.C., Ross Mahlon of Haverhill, Mass., Carol of Manhattan Beach, Calif., and Elizabeth of Alexandria, Va. n Harry G. Wilkinson, 87, a retired Foreign Service officer with USAID, died on Nov. 30, 2020, at home in Greenville, S.C., of natural causes. Mr. Wilkinson was born in Detroit, Mich., to Henry and Sybil (nee Cole) Wilkinson. His father owned an auto- motive shop, and his mother taught piano and voice. He attended Redford High, where he played varsity football, and then spent two years at Michigan State where he was on the college gymnastics team. He spent one semester at the University of Hawaii to get away from the Michigan winter. Living a block from the beach, he surfed, took philosophy classes and came to love water sports. In 1953 Mr. Wilkinson joined the military and was stationed at an Air Force base in England. On discharge, he finished his undergraduate studies at the University of Michigan and went on to the University of Chicago Law School, where he earned his J.D. in 1961. While in law school, he married Dorothy McQuillan; the couple had three sons, Bruce, Stuart and Neal. After graduating, Mr. Wilkinson moved to Washington, D.C., with his young family and worked as counsel to U.S. Senate subcommittees on migra- tory labor and constitutional rights, where he was the principal drafter of federal bail reform and VISTA (domestic Peace Corps) legislation. He then moved to the Community Conciliation Service at the U.S. Justice Department, where he mediated com- munity racial disputes, and later worked as the congressional liaison for the Sec- retary of Labor, dealing with such issues as migratory labor, poverty programs and unemployment insurance. He was also active in Democratic Party politics and performed advance work for the election campaign of Presi- dent Lyndon Johnson in 1964. In 1967 Mr. Wilkinson joined the Peace Corps as deputy director in Ethiopia and was later the Peace Corps director in Costa Rica. He stayed on in Costa Rica after leaving the Peace Corps to practice international law with a local firm. In 1977 he returned to government service as a Foreign Service officer with USAID, serving in Nicaragua, Wash- ington, El Salvador and South Africa. In South Africa he headed the Human Rights Office, supporting local human rights organizations in their struggle against apartheid. A high point was meeting Nelson Mandela. In 1985 Mr. Wilkinson married Cecily Mango, who also worked for USAID. They had a son, Henry. After retiring from the government, Mr. Wilkinson worked for South Africa Lawyers for Human Rights and, later, as a consul- tant on human rights and democracy promotion for USAID in Indonesia and Jordan, where his wife was posted. During retirement in Greenville, S.C., Mr. Wilkinson served on the board of directors of the South Carolina Ameri- can Civil Liberties Union, continuing his lifelong passion to support human and civil rights. He also supported local performing arts groups, attended a vari- ety of cultural events and participated in a range of sports. Mr. Wilkinson was an avid reader of The New York Times and loved classi- cal music. He told wonderful stories about his youth and time overseas and had a repertory of jokes he liked to tell. He was also a talented handyman, who undertook major renovations of the various houses in which he lived and had a collection of classic BMWs and Mercedes. He and his family spent their sum- mers at a lakeside cottage in Hamp- stead, N.H., where they loved swimming and kayaking together. Mr. Wilkinson is survived by his wife of 35 years, Cecily Mango; four sons, Bruce, Stuart, Neal and Henry; and five grandchildren. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be sent to the ACLU of South Carolina, or other human or civil rights organiza- tions of your choice. n