92 MAY-JUNE 2026 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Canada, after a whirlwind two-year friendship in Great Decisions classes. They lived in Northfield for several years, then downsized to Boutwell’s Landing in Oak Park Heights, Minn., in 2021. Amb. Flaten is survived by his wife, Sharon; children, Kristin, Karen (and spouse, Denny Jarosch), Sonia Mathew (and spouse, Paul), and Arne (and spouse, Rebecca); stepchildren, Kim (and spouse, Markus), Jeffery, and Kari Akre; grandchildren, Tasha Flaten, Lara Flaten, and Anjoli Mathew; step-grandchildren, Sarah Tillotson (and spouse, Jake), Brigid Halberg (and spouse, Josh), Rochelle, Caelan, Sebastian, Trisha, Kim, and Ryan; and many great-grandchildren. Memorials may be sent to your charity of choice, an organization working for peace in the world, or Bierman, Benson, Langehough (www.northfieldfuneral.com). n William J. “Bill” Garvelink, 76, a retired member of the Senior Foreign Service with USAID who held the rank of Minister Counselor, died on August 23, 2025, in Falls Church, Va., after suffering an aortic dissection. Born in Holland, Mich., on May 22, 1949, Mr. Garvelink grew up in a Dutch American community that shaped his sense of duty and belonging. In 1970 Mr. Garvelink married Linda Arendsen, and the two supported each other through college and graduate school, moving around the country. He earned degrees from Calvin College and the University of Minnesota, then pursued doctoral work at the University of North Carolina. In 1976 the Garvelinks arrived in Washington, D.C., where he was a congressional staff member for Rep. Don Fraser (D-Minn.). At a time when human rights barely had a foothold in U.S. foreign policy, Mr. Garvelink was one of only two specialists on Capitol Hill. In 1979 he joined USAID, beginning a three-decade career in which he responded to famine, war, and disaster across five continents. Throughout, his wife, Linda, was a partner in every sense of the word. Early Foreign Service assignments include two years in the Department of State’s Bureau for Population, Refugees, and Migration with responsibility for southern Africa and four years as a program officer in Bolivia with USAID. In 1988 Mr. Garvelink started in the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, where he served more than a decade and rose to deputy director. He led disaster assistance response teams in Somalia during famine and Rwanda during genocide and chaired U.S. task forces after the Indian Ocean tsunami. In 1989, with Julia Taft, then director of USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, he helped launch Operation Lifeline Sudan, an unprecedented effort to deliver food across battle lines to starving civilians. That mission became a model for how America could act—not with bombs or threats but with bread and stubborn humanity. In 1999 Mr. Garvelink was named USAID mission director in Eritrea. In 2007 President George W. Bush appointed him U.S. ambassador to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. There he worked to stabilize a country scarred by years of conflict, pressing for reforms, supporting food security, and coordinating aid that reached people long failed by their own leaders. Amb. Garvelink then turned to the problem of hunger. In 2010 he helped lead the Obama administration’s Feed the Future initiative and became the first head of USAID’s Bureau for Food Security, carrying his practical wisdom from refugee camps into global policy. Even after retiring in 2012, Amb. Garvelink never stepped away. He advised International Medical Corps, the same organization that had stood with him in Rwanda, Somalia, and beyond, and was a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Amb. Garvelink received six performance awards, two Meritorious Honor Awards, and a Senior Foreign Service Presidential Meritorious Service Award while at the State Department. Yet, for his family and colleagues, his true honor is written in the lives he touched, the refugees who ate because a convoy arrived, the soldiers in Kisangani trained to serve a people and not just a regime, and the millions lifted by food security programs he helped shape. They remember Amb. Garvelink as steady and principled, a problem-solver who could make the impossible happen when disaster struck, and an individual who never mistook power for purpose. Amb. Garvelink is survived by his wife of 55 years, Linda. n John Elwood Hall, 85, a retired Foreign Service officer, died on January 31, 2026, in Sun City West, Ariz. A native of Niagara Falls, N.Y., Mr. Hall joined the U.S. Foreign Service in September 1962 following graduation from Kenyon College with a major in political science. His first assignment was in State’s Bureau of Administration in Washington, D.C., which he realized ever after was as solid a grounding in the profession as he could have hoped for. In 1965 Mr. Hall and his family transferred to Bordeaux where he served as administrative and consular officer,
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