The Foreign Service Journal, May 2021

72 MAY 2021 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL While a college senior at DePaul, Mr. Kordek was recruited by the U.S. Foreign Service. He worked for 26 years with the U.S. Information Agency, the Interna- tional Cooperation Administration and the U.S. State Department, attaining the rank of Career Minister and serving as an ambassador. Ambassador Kordek served in Serbia, Croatia, Italy, Belgium, Poland, Venezu- ela, Botswana andWashington, D.C. He also worked in numerous other countries as part of official U.S. foreign policy and public diplomacy delegations. One of his first jobs in the Foreign Service was to escort jazz musician Louis Armstrong on a visit to the former Yugosla- via in 1965 as part of a State Department cultural program. Amb. Kordek held many senior posi- tions in the U.S. Foreign Service, includ- ing deputy chief of mission in Warsaw during the rise to power of the Solidarity movement and the visits of Pope John Paul II to Poland. During President Ronald Reagan’s presidency, he was the USIA director of European affairs and then counselor, the agency’s highest career official. He participated in the Geneva and Reykjavík summit meetings between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, as well as in numerous international negotiations. President Reagan nominatedMr. Kordek to be U.S. ambassador to Botswana in 1988, and the U.S. Senate unanimously confirmed him. Following retirement from the Foreign Service in 1990, Amb. Kordek joined DePaul University, where he worked for 15 years as associate vice president and taught courses onWorldWar II and the Holocaust. He also lectured at many uni- versities and organizations. In 1995 President Bill Clinton appointed Amb. Kordek to the U.S. Holo- caust Memorial Council in Washington, which oversees the operations of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Amb. Kordek served on the council’s execu- tive committee and the Committee on Conscience, which monitors genocide worldwide. President Clinton also selected Amb. Kordek to be a member of the U.S. presi- dential delegations to commemorate the 50th anniversaries of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the 1945 liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camps. He traveled on these delegations with, among others, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel. Amb. Kordek is the recipient of many honors, including a presidential award fromPresident Ronald Reagan for “sus- tained superior conduct of U.S. foreign policy.” Amb. Kordek served on several boards of directors when he returned home to Illinois, including the Illinois Humanities Council and the International Visitors Cen- ter of Chicago. He chaired the Chicago- Warsaw Sister Cities program and was co-chair of the National Polish American– Jewish American National Council. In retirement, Amb. Kordek and his wife continued their travels, visiting all the earth’s continents. He loved opera, classi- cal music and jazz, and he was a voracious reader of world history. Amb. Kordek is survived by his spouse of 56 years, Alice (née Kleczynski); son Andrew (Elizabeth) Kordek; daughter Catherine (Lynn) Stover; grandchildren Joshua Kordek, Henry Stover andWill Sto- ver; brother Phillip (Theresa) Kordek; and sister Judy (Chester) Pasowicz. In lieu of flowers, a memorial may be given to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital at 501 St. Jude Place, Memphis TN 38105-9959. n Jay P. (Peter) Moffat Jr., 88, a retired Foreign Service officer and for- mer ambassador, died on Oct. 23, 2020, in Maryland. Mr. Moffat was born on Jan. 17, 1932, in New York City. His father, Jay P. Moffat, was the U.S. ambassador to Canada, and his grandfather, Joseph Clark Grew, was the U.S. ambassador to Japan, where he tried to avert Tokyo’s entry into World War II. Mr. Moffat graduated from Harvard University in 1953 and married Pamela Mary Dawson that same year. From 1953 to 1956 he served in the U.S. Army. In 1956 he entered the U.S. Foreign Service as an intelligence research officer in the State Depart- ment’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. His first overseas posting, as a con- sular officer, was to Kobe, from 1958 to 1961. He was then assigned as a political officer in Paris from 1961 to 1965. Back in Washington, D.C., he served as officer in charge of Benelux affairs from 1965 to 1968, and as staff assistant to Secretary of State Dean Rusk from 1968 to 1969. In 1969 Mr. Moffat was assigned to Bern as a political officer before being transferred in 1971 to Port of Spain to serve as deputy chief of mission (DCM). In 1974 he attended the NATO Defense College in Rome for six months. From 1974 to 1976, he was deputy executive secretary in the State Depart- ment. From 1976 to 1980 Mr. Moffat was DCM in Rabat. He next attended the Executive Seminar in National and International Affairs at the Foreign Ser- vice Institute and served as temporary DCM in Gambia and Lesotho. Mr. Moffat was DCM in N’Djamena when the embassy reopened in 1982 before being appointed ambassador