The Foreign Service Journal, April 2007

Mr. Peters returned to Winston-Salem to care for his mother, Helen G. Peters (also a world traveler), until she was 89 years old. He continued a lifelong love of international travel in retirement, visiting former haunts and colleagues in Germany, Italy and South Africa regularly and often. In the novel City of Falling Angels (Penguin, 2006), author John Berendt acknowledges his debt to Mr. Peters for an under- standing of Venice. Mr. Peters is survived by two sis- ters, Edith Mehlinger and Jacquelyn Tolbert; a brother, Orlando Peters; a niece, Linda Mehlinger; nephews Keith and Ferdinand Mehlinger; and grand-nephews Mark, Jason and Ferdinand IV. Abraham Meyer Sirkin , 92, a retired FSOwith the U.S. Information Agency who used his position to champion freedom of the press and promote American good will interna- tionally, and helped develop human rights as a formal component of American foreign policy, died of pneu- monia on Jan. 7 at a hospice-care cen- ter in Rockville, Md. Mr. Sirkin was born in 1914 in Barre, Vt., the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants who had come to America several years earlier, fleeing discrimi- nation and pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe. The youngest of four, and the only boy, he was brought up in a strictly observant Jewish home. Through his mother, Mr. Sirkin was descended from a long line of rabbis. When he was 13, his father died, and he moved to New York City. He grad- uated from Townsend Harris Hall High School, and earned a B.A. from Columbia University and an M.A. from the Columbia School of Journal- ism in 1936. Mr. Sirkin’s first job was as publicist for the Council of Jewish Welfare Funds in New York from 1937 to 1941. As a commissioned U.S. Army officer during World War II, he served in the Pacific theater and in Japan. On entering the Army, Mr. Sirkin began a correspondence with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who was interest- ed in the daily life and opinions of recruits. As a result, he was invited to the White House on New Year’s Eve in 1941. The correspondence contin- ued, with Mr. Sirkin sending Mrs. Roosevelt regular reports from basic training camp and from the Pacific. Mr. Sirkin resigned his commission as a major in 1946. For the next two years he worked in the press office of Gen. Douglas MacArthur. At Sixth Army HQ in Kyoto he guided a group of correspondents on their first visit to Hiroshima, among them John Hersey, who was gathering material for his book, Hiroshima . From 1948 to 1957, Mr. Sirkin lived in London, first in a press posi- tion with the Economic Cooperation Agency/Mutual Security Agency. Fol- lowing the creation of USIA in 1954, he received his commission as an FSO and was appointed deputy public affairs officer in London. There he wrote speeches for three American ambassadors and supervised a 13-part “Report from America” for BBC-TV. In London, he met and married Helen Ball, an American on assignment as economic analyst with the Marshall Plan mission. They moved to Wash- ington, D.C., in 1957. In Washington as long-range plan- ning officer for USIA from 1958 to 1961, Mr. Sirkin produced the first draft of the contents of the U.S. Exhibition in Moscow — including the kitchen where Khrushchev and Nixon had their famous chat. During this period he also initiated the “Forum” series on the Voice of Ameri- ca to display America’s academic achievements. He was then detailed to the Senior Seminar. For the next three years, from 1963 to 1966, Mr. Sirkin served as director of the U.S. Information Service in South India, based in Madras. There he managed a staff of 125 and super- vised U.S. cultural centers in Hydera- bad, Bangalore and Kerala. All four Sirkin children attended local schools, an unusual choice for Foreign Service families at the time. The Sirkins main- tained longstanding connections with South Indian colleagues and friends, especially in journalism and the arts, returning many times for visits. After studying modern Greek for a year at the Foreign Service Institute, Mr. Sirkin became counselor for pub- lic affairs in Athens in 1967. During five years there, in his own words, “I sought to convince Greek journalists, ex-politicians, university people and cultural leaders that the U.S. did not install the governing junta and did want a speedy return to democracy.” Mr. Sirkin also worked vigorously to maintain the Hellenic-American Union in Athens as a cultural space where opposition members and stu- dents felt welcome. On at least one occasion, the Greek dictator, Col. Pa- padopoulos, tried but failed to have him removed from his post. His last career assignment was as a member of the Policy Planning Staff in the State Department from 1972 to 1974. There, he worked to coordinate policy among various U.S. agencies on international communications and served on American delegations to U.N. working groups on direct-broad- cast satellites. In 1974, Mr. Sirkin wrote several papers on relations with dictatorial regimes, suggesting the U.S. distance itself from its authoritarian allies of 78 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / A P R I L 2 0 0 7 I N M E M O R Y