The Foreign Service Journal, June 2013

66 JUNE 2013 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL at Yongsan base. Father Erhart, a U.S. Army Catholic priest, would regularly visit and offer Communion to John. In 1997 John transferred to the United States with his new family, set- tling into the Reston, Va., community that had been home to the Keiths since 1983. John attended Marshall High School’s Davis Learning Center and eventually found his dream job, working at a movie theater. There he met and befriended Phat Khomp, who was to become a faithful friend and mentor for the rest of John’s life. John moved with his family to Hong Kong, where he became a favorite of the consul general’s residence staff and volunteered, with his mother, at a local orphanage. John similarly endeared himself to the residence staff in Kuala Lumpur, where Mr. Keith served as ambassador. The tropical heat was a challenge for John, who with his mother took up the art of batik at the Kuala Lumpur Crafts Center. John enjoyed drawing and developed a distinctive style. His pieces became treasured gifts to family and friends, and his work was recog- nized by AFSA as one of their holiday postcards. On return to Virginia from Kuala Lumpur, while Mr. Keith served in Afghanistan, John’s health began to decline. His routine of exercising by walking the block in the Keiths’ Reston neighborhood began to erode. By the late fall of 2012, he was hospitalized. Diagnosed with aplastic anemia, he came home from the hospital under hospice care in January. John is survived by five siblings: Jason, Emily, Scott, Andrew and Eliza- beth. They loved him dearly and were his protectors, his co-conspirators and his best friends. When they married, their families became John’s supporters, as well, including Jason’s wife, Annie, and their daughter, Lily. John was proud to be an uncle and doted on his niece, much to the delight of Jason and Annie, who had both served in Korea with the U.S. Army. Emily and Spencer were married in 2011, providing John the opportunity to sport a tuxedo and serve as one of the ushers, handing out programs from his wheelchair. When Scott was married to Barbara in the fall of 2012, John’s health was already in decline, but he played his part in the wedding party, dancing in his wheelchair along with his friends and family. Andrew was engaged to be married on New Year’s Eve 2012. While John was at home under hospice care, on Jan. 17, the day before he died, he was best man to Andrew and Kate at a marriage cer- emony conducted in John’s bedroom at the Keiths’ Reston home, with families of both bride and groom in attendance. Elizabeth (Lizzie) never knew family life without John, because she was born in Seoul while he was being adopted and he left this world before she left their Reston home to make her own way in life. She and he shared a special bond. Mr. Keith and his wife, Jan, are grateful to the many Foreign Service colleagues in Washington and scattered across Asia who embraced John with warmth and love. He had a difficult life, but it was a life that brought grace to others through his suffering. He touched many people, helping all of them to gain perspective on their own lives. The family requests that donations in John’s name be made to the SPARC Solutions organization in Northern Virginia, which works to support adults with lifelong disabilities, at www.sparc solutions.org or by mail to SPARC, P.O. Box 10797, Burke VA 22009. n Shepard C. “Shep” Lowman , 86, a retired Foreign Service officer, died on March 2 at his home in Fairfax, Va. Born and raised in New York and Oklahoma, Mr. Lowman served in the U.S. Navy from 1944 to 1946. He received a B.A. degree from the Uni- versity of Kentucky in 1952 and an LLB from Harvard Law School in 1953. He worked in the private sector until 1956. Mr. Lowman joined the State Depart- ment Foreign Service in 1957. After his first posting, to Vienna, he returned to the department. In 1961 he was detailed to Harvard University for advanced eco- nomic studies, and posted to Stuttgart in 1962. In 1966, he was sent to Viet- nam, where he fell almost instantly in love with the country and its people. He met his future wife, Hiep, in Chau Doc in 1968. After several assignments in the department, in 1974 Mr. Lowman returned to South Vietnam, this time as chief of the internal unit of Embassy Saigon’s political section. There he was charged with assisting with the 1975 American evacuation, with particular responsibility for the family members of American citizens and Vietnamese who had been on our side. Back in Washington, Mr. Low- man was assigned to help resettle the 130,000 Indochinese refugees who were streaming into the United States. There, as his colleague Lacy Wright puts it in the Appreciation on p. 41, he found his calling. By 1981 Mr. Lowman had become deputy assistant secretary in the State Department’s Bureau of Refugee