The Foreign Service Journal, May 2010

74 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A Y 2 0 1 0 Tokyo, with some relief. While they were there, the United States ended its formal occupation and Japan resumed self-government. In 1953, the Sullivans and their two children transferred to Naples, where Mr. Sullivan served as liaison to the U.S. Fleet and NATO. Mrs. Sullivan set up her household, had another baby and, 18 months later, moved the family to Rome, where Mr. Sullivan served under Ambassador Clare Booth Luce. In 1956, they were transferred to The Hague. In 1958, the Sullivans returned to Washington, D.C., for their first assign- ment in the United States. Mrs. Sulli- van learned to drive a car and to tend to her household alone, shopping at su- permarkets and department stores. The family was still in Washington when John Kennedy, a childhood ac- quaintance of Mr. Sullivan’s from their shared New England upbringing, was elected president. They entered into the world of Pres- ident Kennedy’s advisers, endured the Cuban Missile Crisis and eventually watched his funeral on television, along with most other Americans. Mr. Sulli- van was then sent to Saigon on tempo- rary duty, and Mrs. Sullivan packed up her household and four children to join her own family in Mexico City. In 1964, Mr. Sullivan was appoint- mented U.S. ambassador to Laos. In Vientiane, Mrs. Sullivan resumed some familiar aspects of her life overseas — managing a household, being chauf- feured by a driver and entertaining. As wife of the ambassador in a sen- sitive, high-risk post, she worked closely with the American and host-country communities and became attuned to the political environment of a country identified as one of the “dominoes” of the Vietnam war. At one point, she arranged for American entrepreneur H. Ross Perot to fly in a planeload of medical supplies. She also visited U.S. military hospitals in Southeast Asia and helped tend to wounded American ser- vicemen. AfterMr. Sullivan helped initiate the Vietnam peace talks from Laos, the family returned in 1968 toWashington, D.C., where he assisted the talks from the National Security Council and the State Department. Mr. Sullivan was sent on his second ambassadorial assignment, to the Philippines, in 1973, during the presi- dency of Ferdinand Marcos. The U.S. ambassador’s already high profile in Manila was further raised by the fall of Vietnam and the flight of Vietnamese refugees through the Philippines in 1974. During this period, Mrs. Sullivan ran a large household, hosted hundreds of people at a time and came to know many members of Filipino society. In 1977, Mr. Sullivan was named U.S. ambassador to Iran. Only weeks after the family arrived in Tehran, Mrs. Sullivan helped host a visit from Presi- dent Jimmy Carter and, later that year, they accompanied the shah and his wife on a return visit to Washington. Early in their tenure, however, the Sullivans realized that the political situation under the shah was deteriorating. Mrs. Sullivan undertook an intense visitation and entertainment schedule and ran a large household, despite re- sistance from some of her own Persian staff because of her gender. But in early 1979, the State Department ordered all non-essential personnel and all de- pendents to leave. Mrs. Sullivan was in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 14, 1979, when the embassy grounds were over- run by various factions. A few weeks after Mr. Sullivan’s release by the insur- gents, he returned to Washington and later retired from the Foreign Service. The couple then moved to New York City, where Mr. Sullivan served as president of the American Assembly at Columbia University. Mrs. Sullivan taught literacy to Spanish-speaking adults and worked with schoolchildren in the area as a volunteer. At the same time, they built a home in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where they set- tled in 1986. Mrs. Sullivan swam every day in her pool, and she and her hus- band made many new friends and en- tertained friends and family. In 2000, Mr. Sullivan suffered a stroke while visiting family inWashing- ton, D.C., and the couple moved to an assisted living community in the area. Mrs. Sullivan is survived by her hus- band, William, of Washington, D.C.; their daughters, Anne of Washington, D.C., and Peggy of Bethesda, Md.; their sons, John of Louisville, Ky., and Mark of Birmington Hills, Mich.; and six grandchildren. Charles T. Sylvester , 75, a former Foreign Service officer, died on Feb. 7 at his home at Hereford, Ariz. Accompanying his grandfather and father, who served with the U.S. Asiatic Fleet, Mr. Sylvester lived in China from 1936 to 1939, seeing as a child the start of World War II with the Japanese in- vasion there. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1955 and, after training at Pensacola, flew the F-3 Demon as a carrier pilot. His adventures included having to bail out once from his plane over the sea when a fuel line broke. In 1961, Mr. Sylvester joined the Foreign Service, serving first in Bor- deaux and then studying the Chinese language in Taiwan. He served next in I N M E M O R Y