The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2008

Dallas Ford Brown , 75, a retired FSO with USAID, died on Jan. 6 in Richmond, Va. Mr. Brown, known as “Ford,” was born in Greens Fork, Ind. He gradu- ated from Greens Fork High School and earned a B.S. in business at Indi- ana University in 1954. Mr. Brown served in the Air Force ROTC in col- lege, and afterward served in the U.S. Air Force, attaining the rank of cap- tain. Following work as a certified public accountant in private industry, he joined USAID in 1959. Mr. Brown’s Foreign Service career took him and his family to Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Jordan, Camer- oon and Morocco before he was assigned as controller to Cairo in 1975 — shortly after Egypt and the United States resumed diplomatic relations and USAID launched one of its larg- est programs ever. He later served in Washington in several positions, in- cluding as the Africa Bureau’s con- troller. He was the youngest con- troller ever promoted into the Senior Foreign Service. After retiring in 1983, he served as the chief financial management spe- cialist for the Department of State Refugee Program for several years. He was also chief of party for a USAID-financed financial manage- ment development program in the Sahelian countries, and did other short-term work for the agency, usual- ly in Africa. A stalwart friend and wise mentor to many USAID employees, he was an expert bridge player, a con- structor of wonderful birdhouses and a philatelist. When not posted overseas, the Browns resided in Washington, D.C., from 1959 until 2006, when they moved to Richmond, Va., to be near family. Mr. Brown is survived by his wife, Lou Ann Rutherford Brown of Rich- mond, Va.; three children, Thomas Brown of Universal City, Texas, Julie Woessner of Virginia Beach, Va., and Kay Swenson of Midlothian, Va.; eight grandchildren; and a sister, Linda Crabtree of Lafayette, Ind. Memorial contributions may be made to the Cystic Fibrosis Founda- tion or the Indiana University Foun- dation Scholarship Fund. Sylvia Grill Walsh Flenner , 83, a former Foreign Service staff officer and wife of retired FSO Robert H. Flenner, died on April 1, in San Antonio, Texas. Mrs. Flenner was born on July 20, 1924, in New York City, the daughter of Esther Roepke and Saul Grill, who met on a ship while returning to the U.S. from Europe after World War I. Losing her mother in infancy, she was raised by her aunt/stepmother, Ellen Grill, and her grandmother Roepke. She was educated in New York and Washington, D.C., where she gradu- ated from St. Roses. Her first job was in the State Department code room, from 1943 to 1946. Mrs. Flenner began working for the Foreign Service as a secretary at the London Conference of Foreign Ministers at the end of World War II. She was then transferred to the con- sulate general in Munich, where she served for four years, and then to Berlin, for two years. Next, she was posted to Japan, where she served in the consulate in Yokohama for two years. In 1957, she was assigned to Costa Rica, where she met Mr. Flenner, a second secretary. The couple married in 1958, and moved to Washington, D.C., where Ms. Flenner worked in the Department of State’s passport and visa offices. Their son, Robert, was born in 1960. A year later, the family moved to Luanda, where the Flenners worked in the U.S. con- sulate general for five years. In 1966, they returned to Washington, where Mr. Flenner worked at the State Department until he retired in 1968. The Flenners moved to Castine, Maine, in 1968. There Mrs. Flenner assisted her husband in his new posi- tion as head of administration at the Maine Maritime Academy. In 1990, they both retired again and moved to downtown San Antonio, where they lived just off the River Walk. Mrs. Flenner is survived by her husband; a son, Robert Lawrence Flenner and his wife, Patricia; a step- son, John Wareham Flenner; a broth- er, Robert B. Grill and his wife, Laura; two nephews, Robert and John; and a niece, Marisa. Anne Jeanne Gurvin , 75, a retired USIA Senior Foreign Service officer, died on March 4 of complica- tions of breast cancer at Asbury Methodist Village’s Wilson Health Care Center in Gaithersburg, Md. Ms. Gurvin was born in Rochester, Minn. She graduated from high school at age 16 and obtained a B.S. degree in English and American stud- ies, with honors, from the University of Minnesota. She taught high school for two years in Minnesota before returning to the university to obtain an M.S. in information science and Spanish literature. In 1957, she accepted an assign- ment as a regional library administra- tor with the U.S. Army Special Ser- vices in France. Based in Poitiers, she also covered American libraries in Tours, Nantes and Samur. During this period, she traveled throughout Europe and the Middle East. She enrolled in graduate courses at the University of Paris (Sorbonne) and then the University of Madrid, study- J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 8 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 79 I N M E M O R Y u u u