The Foreign Service Journal, June 2013

42 JUNE 2013 | the foreign Service journal Finding His Calling Back in Washington Shep, like many of the FSOs who had been evacuated, was assigned to help resettle the 130,000 Indo- chinese refugees who were streaming into the United States. It was not a glamorous job, but it was there that he found his call- ing. Indeed, Shep Lowman caught fire. By 1981, he had become deputy assistant secretary in the State Department’s Bureau of Refugee Programs, where he exerted a major influence on the U.S. refugee resettlement program. The Orderly Departure Program, which brought many thousands of relatives of Vietnamese refugees to the United States; the Humanitarian Operation program for released political prisoners; and the Amerasian program, for children of Vietnamese and American parentage left in Viet- nam—all bore his imprint. He was well known in the halls of Congress, both among mem- bers and staff, for his advocacy and expertise. Shep also worked on other crises during this period, of course, such as the Cambodian exodus into Thailand that saw more than 200,000 Khmer flee into Khao-I-Dang and other large refugee camps. The Hmong from Laos were another major con- cern; those mountain people, who fled into northernThailand in 1975, needed and deserved our assistance. But it was Shep’s advocacy for the acceptance of Indochinese into third countries, mainly our own, that became his hallmark. It was a commitment that lasted well after “compassion fatigue” for the Indochinese had caused some former colleagues to criti- cize his singlemindedness. When Shep’s State Department career came to an end, he was not finished. From positions at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Jesuit Refugee Service and Refugees International, he continued his advocacy for the admission of Indochinese refugees. He became a source of occasional irritation to more than one of his Refugee Bureau successors. They could not, because of his stature, refuse his requests for appointments; but they must have dreaded receiving him, since they were well aware that his mastery of the subject far exceeded their own. A Passion for Vietnam Resettlement was Shep’s passion, but not his only one. Another was Vietnam itself, where he and his wife, Hiep, spent long periods over the last two decades of his life and where he continued his humanitarian work. In 1991, he joined the board of Vietnam Aid to the Handi- capped. On personal trips to Vietnam, he and Hiep helped oversee the distribution of wheelchairs to thousands of Vietnamese veterans wounded dur- ing the war. He also helped the Vietnamese government write legislation and develop accessible facilities for the handicapped. Shep worked well beyond the normal age of retirement. In 1998, when he was a Jesuit Refugee Service staff member and I was doing similar work for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Kosovo crisis erupted. Shep suggested that he and I travel to the region to report on how our respective agencies might assist the Kosovar refugees streaming into Macedonia and Shep worked almost around the clock, and we both left Saigon by helicopter from the embassy roof on the last day. Photo Left: Shep Lowman with a group of amputees in Nha Trang, Vietnam, in February 2001. Photo at right: Shep Lowman at a refugee camp. Courtesy Hiep Lowman.