The Foreign Service Journal, May 2020

76 MAY 2020 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL In a way, Tex was too big for little Melbourne—too big for anywhere maybe—but the Australians couldn’t get enough of him. And neither, I think, could the rest of the world. Everything about Tex was big—his handshake, his laugh, his ideas and his heart. He was the opposite of typical, as American as they come, and truly one of a kind. —JimDeHart Remembering Tex in South America Memories about Tex Harris surfaced often during a cruise I just completed around South America. There was the square in Buenos Aires where women still com- memorate eachThursday those family members who disappeared under the Argentine junta. Fearlessly, Tex took the physical and bureaucratic risks needed to expose these atrocities. In Lima, memories of Tex were heightened with the news that former U.N. Secretary General Pérez de Cuéllar had died. To cope with war and famine in Africa’s Greater Horn, 1984-85, State Refugee Bureau leadership intervened with de Cuéllar to launch the U.N. Organization for Emergency Operations in Africa, described later as “The U.N.’s Finest Hour.” But it took Tex Harris, head of the bureau’s emergency unit, tirelessly mentoring and facilitating from alongside the U.N. field effort, to enable it to clinch that extraordinary title. That was vintage Tex, bigger than life, typically in the toughest humanitarian arenas, and forever now in our hearts. —Arthur E. “Gene” Dewey Outsized Loss What a loss! Everything about Tex was outsized. His energy and enthusi- asm; his outlook and optimism; his spirit and voice; his vision and influence; his interests and engagement; his height and girth; and his heart (hard to believe that gave out); even his walker was Texas-sized. And his passing means that the hole in all of our lives will be equally outsized. n —Thomas “Ted” E. McNamara Tex and his wife, Jeanie, in 1982 in Washington, D.C. CEDOC