The Foreign Service Journal, May 2020

had to raise donations to cover the $1,738.89 construction cost (around $34,000 in today’s dollars). Finally, after noted archi- tect Waddy B. Wood designed a tablet of Virginia greenstone mounted in a framework of white Alabama marble, the U.S. Commission on Fine Arts approved the design. As work progressed, the Executive Committee grappled with a question that would arise again and again: Whom, exactly, should the tablet honor? The committee discarded a proposal to honor all diplomatic and consular officers dying abroad, which would have included those whose deaths (such as by heart attack or during a pandemic like the 1918-1920 Spanish flu) were not due to the distinctive risks of overseas service. Instead, the committee settled on honoring those dip- lomatic and consular officers who died on active duty overseas “under heroic or tragic circumstances.” That standard was vague, but the U.S. House of Representa- tives report that recommended placing the memorial on gov- ernment property explained that it would honor those dying in natural disasters, from tropical diseases, during official travel and due to violence. Those criteria are apparent in the first 65 names inscribed on the plaque. Forty-two died of conta- gious diseases encountered overseas, such as yellow fever and malaria. Seven were lost at sea traveling to or from their post of assignment (the first listed name, William Palfrey, elected by the Continental Congress as consul in France, died in 1780, lost at sea en route to his post). Six died in natural disasters, such as earthquakes and hurricanes at post. Four died while attempting to save a life. Three were murdered—in Bogotá, in Tehran and in Andixcole (now Andasibe), Madagascar—while two died of “exhaustion.” Another, Joel Barlow, was caught up in the maelstrom of Napoleon’s 1812 retreat from Moscow, and died of pneumonia in the bitter cold of a Polish winter. The Memorial Tablet’s unveiling took place on March 3, 1933, in the north entrance of the State, War and Navy Build- ing (known today as the Eisenhower Executive Office Building) next to the White House. Secretary Stimson, who had donated the American flags and their brass bases that flanked the tablet, presided as 10 senators and congressmen looked on. The tablet, said the Secretary, “should serve as a means of bringing home to the people of this country the fact that we have a Service in our Government devoted to peaceful inter- course between the nations and the assistance of our peaceful commerce which, nevertheless, may occasionally exact from its servants a sacrifice the same as that which we expect from our soldiers and our sailors.” The memorial’s second pur- pose, he said, is to “serve in the development in our present Service—the successors of the men whose names are recorded here—of that same spirit of devotion and sacrifice which those men evidenced.” Before the ceremony ended with a Navy bugler sounding “Taps,” Secretary Stimson noted that there were undoubtedly other American diplomats and consular officers who had died in the performance of their duties in distant lands. But the facts of their deaths “have not survived the thickening veil of time.” Indeed, later research has revealed many more such cases (see sidebar, p. 46). Second Thoughts As the 1930s progressed, new AFSA leaders interpreted the criteria for inscription differently. In 1938, the Executive Committee declined to add the name of a vice consul who had died of malaria in Colombia. In August of that year, The AFSA Memorial Tablet was unveiled on March 3, 1933, with Secretary of State Henry Stimson presiding. This photo of the tablet appeared in the November 1936 photographic supplement of the American Foreign Service Journal . AFSA/ FSJ SUPPLEMENTNOVEMBER 1936 THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MAY 2020 45