The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2006

member of the Policy Planning Council and deputy assistant secretary of State for Far Eastern affairs. From 1964 to 1968, he served as consul gen- eral in Hong Kong, with the rank of minister. In 1968-1969, he was a diplomat-in-residence at the Univer- sity of California at Berkeley. Edward Rice and Mary June Kellogg were married in 1942. After their years in the Foreign Service, much of it dealing with Asia, they built a home in Tiburon, Calif., with a lovely view of San Francisco and its bay. Mrs. Rice had and still has many art interests. Mr. Rice was for a time a research associate at the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California. He is the author of two books: Mao’s Way (University of California Press, 1972), an account of Mao Tse-tung’s life and leadership of the Chinese Communist Party that won the Commonwealth Club’s gold medal for nonfiction in 1973, and Wars of the Third Kind: Conflict in Underdeveloped Countries (Univer- sity of California Press, 1986). Mr. Rice was slowed by a stroke in his final years. He is survived by his wife, Mary Kellogg Rice, and niece, Catherine Siewert. Edward Louis Robinson , 84, a retired Foreign Service Reserve offi- cer with the U.S. Information Agency, died of cancer on Feb. 8 at the Wilson Health Care Center of Asbury Meth- odist Village, in Gaithersburg, Md. Born in Ames, Iowa, Mr. Robinson was also an avid son of northern Minnesota. He served in the U.S. Navy in the Pacific during World War II, and was honorably discharged as a lieutenant (j.g.). He earned a B.A. from the University of Iowa in 1944, an M.S. from the University of Colorado in 1948 and an M.A. in jour- nalism from the University of Minne- sota in 1952. He wrote advertising and educational television copy from 1948 to 1972. For a short time, in 1967-1968, he was a consultant to the U.S. government’s Teacher Corps program. Mr. Robinson joined the Foreign Service in 1954, and was posted to Rangoon, and then Moulmein. He was transferred to Stuttgart in 1957, and detailed to the Foreign Service Institute’s language school in Frank- furt in 1958. In 1959, he was named director of the Amerika Haus in Mar- burg. From 1960 to 1962, he was an information officer in Saigon. From 1962 to 1964, he worked at the Voice of America in Washington, D.C. He was posted to Bombay in 1964, and returned to USIA headquarters in 1966. He held a number of positions at USIA, notably head of its Thai lan- guage service, from 1972 until he retired in 1985. Friends and family remember him as an avid reader, author, storyteller, gardener, walker and loyal friend. He is the author of Sloth and Heathen Folly (Macmillan, 1972), a novel set in Burma (now Myanmar) about serving as an FSO in Gamalia, a “backwater corner of Asia.” Mr. Robinson and his family lived for many years in Bethesda, Md., before moving to Darnestown, Md., in 1992. Survivors include his beloved wife of 40 years, Mary Blair Robinson, and three sons: Edward Jr. of New York City, Michael of Darnestown, and Neil of San Diego, Calif. He was pre- ceded in death by a fourth and much- loved son, Ben, in 1996. There are also two sons from a previous mar- riage to the former Joanne Peterson: Rand, a USAID officer now serving in Tel Aviv; and Shawn, of Frederick, Md. There are two granddaughters, Sophia and Kate, who live with their mother, Katya Robinson, of Silver Spring, Md. Mary Ryan , 65, a retired FSO and former career ambassador, died on April 25 of myelofibrosis at her home in Washington, D.C. Ambassador Ryan was born in New York, and received a bachelor’s degree in 1963 and a master’s degree in 1965, both from St. John’s Univer- sity. She remained a New Yorker in spirit her entire life, friends told the Washington Post , with a New York Public Library book bag constantly filled with books and a passionate attachment to the New York Yankees. Amb. Ryan joined the Foreign Service in 1966. Her first posting was to Naples. She served in Tegucigalpa and Monterrey before returning to Washington, D.C., to take up a posi- tion as roving administrative officer for Africa and post management offi- cer in the Bureau of African Affairs. In 1980 she was posted as administra- tive counselor to Abidjan, and then Khartoum. In 1988 she was appoint- ed ambassador to Swaziland, and in 1990 became director of the Kuwait Task Force after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. In 1991, Amb. Ryan was one of 14 consular officers fired by Assistant Secretary of State Elizabeth M. Tomposi, a political appointee. Amb. Ryan then became the first director of operations for the U.N. Special Com- mission on the elimination of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, based in New York. When Tamposi was herself fired by Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger (for authorizing the search of passport records belonging to then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton), Amb. Ryan returned to Washington as deputy assistant secre- tary in the Bureau of European and 58 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 I N M E M O R Y