The Foreign Service Journal, May 2017

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MAY 2017 61 are encouraged to contribute to the Ozona United Methodist Church’s “Loaves and Fishes Fund”; Mayo Clinic Foundation; Friends of the Crockett County Public Library; Angelo State Uni- versity Foundation for E. James Holland- Roy A. Harrell Jr. Foreign Affairs Speakers Program Endowment, or a charity of your choice. n Charles T. Magee, 84, a retired Foreign Service officer, died on Jan. 25 in Washington, D.C. Born on March 6, 1932, in Clifton Forge, Va., Mr. Magee received his bach- elor’s degree from Harvard University in 1953. After graduation and reserve officer training with the U.S. Navy at Newport, Va., he served for two years on a destroyer in the Atlantic Fleet. Mr. Magee then elected to attend the Naval Language School at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., becom- ing fluent in Russian. From 1956 to 1959, he served as a naval intelligence officer on submarines in the Pacific Fleet, and retired from the naval reserve with the rank of lieutenant commander. In 1959 Mr. Magee married Maideh Mazda, a language teacher at the Defense Language Institute at Georgetown Uni- versity. In 1961 Mr. Magee joined the U.S. Foreign Service, where he would enjoy a distinguished 28-year diplomatic career specializing in Russian affairs. His first overseas posting was to U.S. Consulate Windsor in 1961, followed by an assign- ment to Paris as political-military officer in 1964. He returned to Washington, D.C., and the Soviet desk at State in 1966. Dur- ing this tour, in 1967, he had the task of escorting Svetlana Stalin into the United States. In 1968 he was detailed to the U.S. Army school at Garmisch for Russian- language instruction and area studies training in preparation for his 1969 assignment to Moscow as a publications procurement officer and, later, a political officer. Returning to State, Mr. Magee served as deputy director of operations in the Executive Secretariat from 1971 to 1972. After serving as officer-in-charge at the French desk from 1971 to 1974, he was posted to Paris in 1974 as chief of internal political affairs and executive assistant to the ambassador. A posting as deputy chief of mission in Sofia in 1977 was followed by an assign- ment in the Bureau of Human Resources in Washington in 1980 and a tour with the Office of the Inspector General in 1982. In 1984, Mr. Magee was posted to Leningrad as consul general. In 1986 he was detailed to San Francisco as spe- cial assistant for international affairs to Mayor Dianne Feinstein, and in 1988 he was tasked with directing Russian-lan- guage operations for the U.S. delegation conducting arms negotiations with the Soviet Union. Mr. Magee retired from the Foreign Service in 1989 with the rank of ambas- sador. In retirement, he was senior program officer with the Citizens Democracy Corps in Washington, D.C., from 1992 to 1993, and served as an international elec- tion observer for the State Department and for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe until 2009. He led election monitoring missions in Ukraine, Russia, Latvia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, the Czech Republic, Malta and Ireland. Friends remember Mr. Magee as a wonderful raconteur and an adventur- ous hiker and urban walker. Attending performances at the Kirov in Leningrad enhanced his love of ballet. Mr. Magee’s wife of almost 50 years, Maideh, a distinguished linguist, a lec- turer on French and Russian art and the author of a popular cookbook, In a Per- sian Kitchen , predeceased him in 2012. He is survived by their daughter, Maya, of Washington, D.C. n WilliamMichael Meserve, 67, a retired Senior Foreign Service officer, died at his home in Arlington, Va., on Feb. 23 of metastasized colon cancer. Mr. Meserve was born in 1949. He grew up in Gardiner, Maine, the son of two nurses. The first in his family to go to college, he attended Colby College in Waterville, Maine, where he became interested in Japan. After graduation he lived, studied and worked in Tokyo for several years. On returning to the United States, he pursued graduate studies in Asian history and political science at Indiana Univer- sity, and then studied law at Washington University in St. Louis. Midway through law school, however, he was invited to join the Foreign Service, a dream come true, and he set off for Washington, D.C. Mr. Meserve’s 30-year career as a political officer in the U.S. Foreign Ser- vice centered on Japan and China, but included extensive work in Korea, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Mongolia, Thailand, New Zealand and Australia. An excellent linguist, he was fluent in Japanese, proficient in Mandarin and had a strong working knowledge of Canton- ese and Russian. Mr. Meserve’s many assignments included serving as political adviser to U.S. Army Pacific, an office he established and which strengthened civilian-military cooperation; minister counselor for political affairs in Tokyo; director of the Office of Taiwan Affairs; deputy director and acting direc-