The Foreign Service Journal, May 2015

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MAY 2015 65 former Soviet Union, president of the Harvard Board of Overseers and the Terra Foundation of American Art, and gover- nor of the American Hospital in Paris. He was a member of AFSA and the Council on Foreign Relations and an officer of the Légion d’ Honneur. Amb. Hartman is survived by his wife of 66 years, the former Donna Ford, of Washington, D.C.; five children: David Hartman of Rochester, Mich.; John Hart- man of Vero Beach, Fla.; Sarah Hartman of Brooklyn, N.Y.; J. Lise Hartman of Paris; and Benjamin Hartman of Manhat- tan, N.Y.; 15 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. n Ellen Colburn Kennedy , 80, the wife of retired FSO and oral historian Charles Stuart Kennedy Jr., died at the Goodwin House in Bailey’s Crossroads, Va., on Jan. 22, of pancreatic cancer. Mrs. Kennedy was born in Kansas City, Mo., on Oct. 16, 1934. Her family moved to New England, and she spent her childhood in Boston, Mass., Portland, Maine, and Sheffield, Vt. She graduated from Deering High School in Portland and attended Smith College and Boston University, where she met her husband. Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy married in 1955 and proceeded to posts in Frank- furt, Dhahran, Belgrade, Athens, Seoul, Naples and Washington, D.C. Mrs. Ken- nedy experienced a major earthquake in Naples, a military coup in Greece and a bomb in her car in Athens. In Belgrade, she established what was likely the first international Girl Scout troop, for daugh- ters of foreign diplomats and business- people. Mrs. Kennedy finished her undergrad- uate studies in English at the University of Maryland while Mr. Kennedy served in Vietnam. She taught English in Northern Virginia and at international high schools in Athens and Seoul. She later taught English as a second language to Italians in Naples and, on returning to the United States, earned a master’s degree in lin- guistics at American University. On her husband’s retirement in 1985, Mrs. Kennedy taught English to newly arrived immigrants in Fairfax County public schools and at Northern Virginia Community College. She was an active member of St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Annandale, Va., and enjoyed reading the New Testament in Greek. Mrs. Kennedy is survived by her husband, Charles; daughters, Heather Kennedy, of Seattle, Wash., and Victoria Devereaux, of Arlington, Va.; son, Charles Stuart Kennedy III of New York and Los Angeles; seven grandchildren: Sean, Stephen, Alexandra, Charles, Maggie, Merle and William; and one very recent great-granddaughter, Piper. n Eberhardt Victor “Vic” Niemeyer Jr. , 95, a retired FSO with the U.S. Infor- mation Agency, died on March 1. Mr. Niemeyer was born in Houston, Texas, on Sept. 28, 1919, and grew up in La Porte, on Galveston Bay. He graduated from high school in 1936 and attended Schreiner Institute in Kerrville, Texas, and the U.S. Naval Academy for one year, before graduating from the University of Texas with a degree in liberal arts in 1941. In late 1941, Mr. Niemeyer entered the Northwestern University Naval Reserve training unit. He graduated and was com- missioned in January 1942 as an ensign. He then entered the U.S. Submarine Service, where he served in the Atlantic and Pacific during World War II. In 1944, Mr. Niemeyer married Dorothea Hasskarl of Brenham, Texas. He returned to college after the war and received a B.S. in dairy husbandry. He took up dairy farming in Brenham, but discovered it was not his calling in life; so he returned to the University of Texas for an M.A. in Latin American studies. Sadly, polio claimed Mr. Niemeyer’s first wife in 1956. He earned a Ph.D. from the University of Texas in 1958 and mar- ried Lala Acosta on May 31 of that year. Mr. Niemeyer went on to serve with the U.S. Information Agency for 24 years, with postings in Honduras, Peru, Guate- mala, Chile, the Philippines, Mexico and Trinidad and Tobago. He retired in 1979 to Austin, Texas, where he worked at the University of Texas in the Institute of Latin American Studies and the International Office for 10 years before retiring again. Mr. Niemeyer founded the Central Texas Foreign Service Group, co-founded the East Austin Rotary Club and served in many organizations, usually as president. In 2000, he received the Ohtli Award, given by the Mexican government to a member of the Mexican-American com- munity for “service to Mexico and the Mexican community.” Mr. Niemeyer was a historian of Mexico, and his two books, Revolution at Querétaro: The Constitu- tional Convention of 1916-1917 and El General Bernardo Reyes , were published by the Chamber of Deputies and the Sen- ate of Mexico’s federal Congress. In 2011, Mr. Niemeyer received Rotary International’s Service Above Self Award, given annually to 100 Rotarians world- wide, in recognition of his collection and shipment of 4,000 pieces of used school furniture to Tapachula, Chiapas, Mexico. The project required five boxcars and $25,000 for rail shipment. The funds were raised locally by Mr. Niemeyer and oth- ers, and the local Lions Club distributed the equipment at 40 different schools. Family members remember Mr. Niemeyer as genuine and humble. They recall fondly that he relished showing off