The Foreign Service Journal, March 2022

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MARCH 2022 85 ner, he earned a bachelor’s degree from Columbia College, New York City, in 1953 and a master’s degree and doctorate from The George Washington University. He also attended the then Georgetown Institute of Language and Linguistics from 1955 to 1956 and the National War College between 1973 and 1974. After completing service in the U.S. Army, Mr. Skoug married the love of his life, Martha Reed, in 1958. Together, they raised two children while traveling the world. His Foreign Service career, which lasted from 1957 to 1990, included assignments in Germany, Mexico, the former Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union and Venezuela (twice), as well as four tours at the Department of State in Wash- ington, D.C. Some of the highlights of his career include serving in Prague during the War- saw Pact invasion of the country in 1968; traveling the world as a Foreign Service inspector; working as economic-commer- cial counselor in Moscow; negotiating the release of political prisoners with Fidel Castro while director of the Cuban affairs office; and establishing personal relations between Venezuelan President Carlos Andrés Pérez and President George H.W. Bush. His final and most prestigious posi- tion was that of deputy chief of mission in Caracas during a period of political unrest. Mr. Skoug published two books: The United States and Cuba Under Reagan and Shultz: A Foreign Service Officer Reports (Praeger, 1996) and Czechoslo- vakia’s Lost Fight for Freedom, 1967- 1969: An American Embassy Perspective (Praeger, 1999). He received two Presidential Meritori- ous Service awards and a personal com- mendation from Secretary of State George Shultz for helping to negotiate a migration agreement with Cuba in 1984. After retirement, Mr. Skoug andMartha, his beloved wife of 50 years, resided in Virginia, where they enjoyed host- ing their two children’s families. After Martha’s death, he moved to Harleysville to be near his daughter, Reed, and her husband, Michael. In 2020 he appeared in an episode of the Discovery Channel program, “Expedi- tion Unknown,” with his son and grandson to remember Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 2501, an unsolved airplane crash that had taken his father’s life in 1950. A devoted family man all his life, Mr. Skoug also loved dogs, nature, gardening and all manner of competitive games, par- ticularly baseball. He promoted charitable contributions for the humane treatment of all sentient beings—in particular, the Humane Farming Association and Animal Welfare Institute. He is survived by his two children, Reed and Kenneth, and their spouses, Michael and Becky, as well as five grand- children, Curtis, Kenneth, Cecilia, Evange- line and Meganne. n Michael B. Smith, 85, a retired Foreign Service officer, died of pneumonia in Aldie, Va., on Nov. 8, 2021. Mr. Smith, whose father ran a con- struction business, was born in Marble- head, Mass., on June 16, 1936. He learned to sail as a child, continuing a tradition of local seafaring his family traced back to 1640. As an adult, he sailed on the Chesa- peake Bay in his 34-foot sloop, sometimes with a foreign guest on board with whom he talked trade business. He studied Scandinavian affairs and international government at Harvard University, where he graduated in 1958. The Foreign Service initially rejected his application for a job, deeming himmedi- cally unqualified because his spleen had been removed when he was a child due to a blood condition. His mother, outraged, protested in a letter to Secretary of State Christian A. Herter, noting that her son had played football and lacrosse at Harvard. A few months later, the State Department accepted him. His first overseas assignment was in 1960 to Tehran, one of the largest U.S. mis- sions in the world at the time, where his duties included running the commissary and helping to install an elaborate Lionel model train set that a visitor had given to the shah’s infant. He then held junior posts in Chad and France prior to an unusual assignment to the White House Office of Presidential Correspondence, where he helped answer letters Americans had written to President Richard Nixon. He joined a team nego- tiating textile-trade agreements in the mid-1970s and soon became chief textile negotiator in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. Mr. Smith went on to lead trade delega- tions for more than a decade, including as deputy U.S. trade representative, with the rank of ambassador, in both the Carter and Reagan administrations. Known for his blunt, hard-nosed approach, he was the nation’s point man in global talks aimed at reducing or eliminating tariffs, opening markets and extending trade rules to services and intellectual property. Ambassador Smith was also among the leaders in the 1979 Tokyo Round of mul- tilateral trade negotiations that cut tariffs and slowed the growth of other trade bar- riers on a range of goods in 102 countries. At the negotiating table, he often faced counterparts who refused to make conces- sions. One of his tricks was to pull out his airline ticket and muse about the pos- sibility of catching an earlier flight home.