The Foreign Service Journal, May 2016

78 MAY 2016 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Mr. Levintowwas born in Philadelphia, Pa., on June 15, 1926, the son of Benja- min and Dora (Melnicoff). During World War II he served in the Army Air Corps (1944-1945), and graduated fromAntioch College in 1950 with a bachelor’s degree in government. He earned his master’s in development economics from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1970. From 1958 to 1984, he served as a For- eign Service officer with the U.S. Agency for International Development, retiring as a career member of the Senior Foreign Ser- vice with the rank of counselor. He married Arsenia Gonzalez in 1951, and the couple raised four children during the course of his various overseas postings including the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Iran, Turkey, Viet- nam, Liberia, Afghanistan and Ghana. Mr. Levintow’s Washington, D.C., tours included serving as director for the Paki- stan and Nepal office and in the Bureau for Private Enterprise. He also served on the U.S. delegation to the Asian Develop- ment Bank and helped to establish the U.S. Trade and Development Agency. After retiring from the Foreign Service, he worked inWashington, D.C., for the Institute for Public-Private Partnerships, the Center for Financial Engineering in Development and the Center for Privatiza- tion. There he served as a development economist, advising government officials inmore than 30 countries on public sector reform strategies that involved public- private partnerships. He conducted capacity-building work- shops and seminars on project design, procurement, contract monitoring and regulatory governance. This included a broad range of projects such as extending public services to former black town- ships in South Africa, advising Indonesia on facilitating foreign direct investment, advising the governorates of Alexandria and Cairo in Egypt on solutions for solid waste management, andmany other public sector reform and anti-poverty initiatives. After his wife, Arsenia, died in 2003, Mr. Levintow relocated to Lyme where he enjoyed a long and active “On Golden Pond” phase, which included biking, kaya- king, canoeing and the pleasures of stoking his wood stove with logs he had stacked himself. He had been raised in the Jewish tradi- tion, but after moving to Lyme he joined the Lyme Congregational Church, where he served on the Outreach Committee and on the board. He was also an active member of “Those Guys,” a men’s service organization in Lyme. Family and friends recall one of his many favorite sayings, that his life’s goal could be summed up in the famous quota- tion from the American educator, Horace Mann: “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.” Mr. Levintow is survived by his daugh- ter, Alexandra Howell (and her husband Peter Tenney) of Lyme, and his three sons, Nicholas (and his wife, Katharina), Christopher and Anthony; and his grand- children, Cameron, Nathan and Caroline Howell, and Sara, David and Christopher Levintow. His brother Leon predeceased him in 2014. Memorial contributions may be made to the Parish Nurse programor toThose Guys, c/o Lyme Congregational Church, Lyme NH 03768. n Helen Stephens Nagy , the spouse of retired Foreign Service officer Ernest A. Nagy, died of Alzheimer’s disease on Aug. 15 in Burbank, Calif. Mrs. Nagy was a Foreign Service secre- tary when she met her husband, Ernest, at his first post, Budapest, in 1952. She had previously served at the U.S. embassy in Rome. In accordance with the regulations of the time, she resigned from the Foreign Service uponmarriage. She subsequently served as a secretary at embassies in Berlin, Rome and London, and was an occasional secretary with the State Department following her husband’s retirement. She also served on the Tower Commission and at shorter-term assign- ments in Vancouver, Kyiv and Geneva. Mr. andMrs. Nagy were married for 61 years. She led an adventurous, exciting and valuable life of service. n Russell “Russ” Prickett , 83, a retired Foreign Service officer, died on Jan. 18 in Ashburn, Va. Mr. Prickett was born onMay 18, 1932, inWillmar, Minn., to Glenn and Edna Prickett, the eldest of three siblings. He graduated fromMurray High School in St. Paul, Minn., in 1950, Hamline University in 1954, and Harvard Law School in 1957. He served in the U.S. Army from 1957 to 1958. Amember of the Minnesota Bar, he practiced law and edited legal publications from 1958 to 1959. After marrying Hiltrun Hermann, with whomhe would have four daughters, he began his Foreign Service career in 1959. His overseas postings included Basel, Vienna, Tokyo and Belgrade. During two separate assignments in Yugoslavia, he served as commercial attaché and eco- nomic counselor, bringing American trade andmanufacturing investments into that nation. In 1974, Mr. Prickett was posted to Tokyo as deputy economic counselor. He returned toWashington, D.C., in 1976 and was assigned first to the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs and then to the Bureau of Intelligence and Research as chief of the Trade and Finance Division. He was detailed to the Department of Commerce in 1980, and then served as economic counselor and commercial