The Foreign Service Journal, May 2020

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MAY 2020 67 a real hero, especially at this particularly troubled time abroad for American democracy and leadership. Tex Harris was still engaged in that lifelong mission on multiple fronts when he died on Feb. 23 at a hospital in Fairfax County, Virginia. He was 81. Survivors include his wife of 53 years, the former Jeanie Roeder, of McLean, Va.; three children, Scott Harris of McLean, Julie Harris of Falls Church, Va., and Clark Harris of Los Angeles, Calif.; and two grandsons. Fighting the Good Fight Franklyn Allen Harris was born on May 13, 1938, in Glen- dale, California, and grew up in Dallas, where he was an all- state basketball player in high school. His father was a busi- nessman, and his mother had been a model and sales clerk. After graduating from Princeton University in 1960, Mr. Har- ris used funds intended for a car purchase to travel around the world for almost three years, meeting a number of diplomats in his journeys. After graduating from law school at the University of Texas, he joined the Foreign Service in 1965. Tex first served in Caracas, then spent most of the next decade in Washington, D.C., in various positions. But the most famous example of his legendary tenacity came in Argentina, at the height of that country’s “dirty war.” A group of military leaders had seized control of the government in 1976 after the chaotic two-year presidency of Isabel Perón. President Gerald Ford’s administration initially LARGER THAN LIFE F. Allen “Tex” Harris 1938-2020 APPRECIATION O ne would not expect a 6’7” for- mer basketball player to fit the stereotype of a mild-mannered diplomat, and “Tex” (as Frank- lyn Allen Harris was universally known) most assuredly did not. Although he was a firm believer in the power of persuasion, throughout his 35-year Foreign Service career Tex stood ready to use his impressive intellect, imposing bulk and booming voice to defend the oppressed and speak truth to power. “Today a nation is judged by how it treats its own citizens, establishing a new norm in modern diplomacy,” Tex Harris declared in 2013, as he received an award from the United Nations Association for “the use of diplomacy to advance human rights.” An unforgettable mentor as well as a role model for many of those who fought to make President Jimmy Carter’s human rights revolution a reality, Harris will be remembered as Steven Alan Honley, a State Department Foreign Service officer from 1985 to 1997, and editor-in-chief of The Foreign Service Journal from 2001 to 2014, is a regular contributor to the Journal . He is the author of Future Forward: FSI at 70—A History of the For- eign Service Institute (Arlington Hall Press, 2017).