The Foreign Service Journal, April 2013

64 april 2013 | the foreign Service journal lor left no doubt that he considered that response inadequate. “The relationship with the Berlin city government was fraught,” recalls Wil- liam Ryerson, a retired FSO and former ambassador to Albania who served with Mr. Heichler in Berlin. “Keeping every- body on both sides well informed was no small feat, and he did it consummately.” In 1965 Mr. Heichler was dispatched to Yaoundé as an economic officer, after which he served two years in Kinshasa as head of the embassy’s economic section and deputy director of USAID. He then returned to Europe to attend the NATO Defense College program in Rome, before taking up the role of politi- cal officer at Embassy Bern. In 1973 Mr. Heichler returned to the Central Euro- pean Affairs office at the State Depart- ment, where he occasionally employed his German accent to prank colleagues over the phone while Henry Kissinger was Secretary of State. Mr. Heichler was seconded to NATO headquarters in Brussels in 1977, where he was on the international staff as deputy assistant secretary general for political affairs and head of the political directorate. During his last year at NATO, that group grappled with the difficult decision to station Pershing II and cruise missiles in Germany as a response to the Soviet SS-20 threat. In 1980 Mr. Heichler took up what was to be his last overseas post, as counselor for mutual security affairs in Ankara. One month into this new post- ing, Mr. Heichler was promoted to the rank of FS-1, achieving a lifelong career goal. Shortly before his arrival, a new defense and economic cooperation agreement had been reached between Turkey and the United States, and he was responsible for making sure that it was implemented properly. “He also had the delicate task of being the interface between the embassy and the major general who headed the large military logistical operation in Turkey, a task he carried out with his typical diplomatic skill,” says retired FSO Michael Cotter, a colleague at the embassy. Upon his return to Washington in 1983, Mr. Heichler was appointed to a position in the same division of the State Department where he had begun his career, the Bureau of Research and Intelligence. He served as director of intelligence coordination until leaving government service in 1986. Mr. Heichler retired to Frederick, Md., where his wife, the Rev. Muriel N. Heichler, had been called as pastor of Bethel Lutheran Church (she had attended seminary in Gettysburg, Pa., after the couple’s return from Ankara). He volunteered as a translator of mono- graphs for the Smithsonian Institution, and helped write grant proposals and newsletters for the nonprofit Family Life Center in Frederick. Survivors include Muriel, his wife of 62 years, of Frederick; a son, Peter Heichler of Winchester, Va.; daughters Katherine Heichler of Stamford, Conn., and Elizabeth Heichler of Arlington, Mass.; grandsons Christopher and Nich- olas, and great-granddaughter Olivia. His eldest daughter, Paula, predeceased him. n Sanford “Sandy” Menter, 92, a retired Foreign Service officer, died on Feb. 2 in Laguna Hills, Calif. A resident of Lake Forest, Calif., he had earlier lived in McLean, Va., for 32 years. Mr. Menter was born in Middletown, N.Y. He was a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and held a master of science degree in public administra- tion from Syracuse University’s Maxwell