The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2008

From 1966 to 1969, he was BNC director in Santo Domingo, where he is remembered for creating youth softball leagues and opening exhibit space for struggling Dominican art- ists. From there Mr. Keiderling was posted to Asuncion as BNC director from 1969 to 1972. There he orga- nized a “musical train,” which took Paraguayan musicians into the iso- lated interior of the country to per- form. Mr. Keiderling was commissioned as an FSO in 1973. His sole Wash- ington tour, from 1973 to 1976, was as USIA’s Wireless File reporter on Capitol Hill, where he covered Watergate and many other stories. Posted to Quito as cultural affairs officer from 1976 to 1980, Mr. Keiderling covered every inch of the country in his Volkswagen camper. Playing the balalaika, a stringed instrument of Russian folk origin, he made himself beloved of artists and musicians throughout the country. He was then assigned to Lisbon as CAO from 1980 to 1985, and to Rio de Janeiro as branch public affairs officer from 1985 to 1989. There he continued to work with the groups he loved: university professors and stu- dents, intellectuals and civic leaders. His last tour was as CAO in Bogota from 1989 to 1992, after which he retired and settled in Cochabamba. Mr. Keiderling viewed retirement as an opportunity to travel again. He returned often to his other homes in the various countries in which he had served, and was determined to visit the regions of the world he’d not yet seen. He visited southern Africa, Central Asia, Cuba, New Zealand and Australia, where he became the old- est registered backpacker at the age of 75. He is survived by his wife, Charo, of Cochabamba, Bolivia, and his three children: Kelly, an FSO now posted to Chisinau, Casey and Keith. Annyce Faye Hendricks Manch , 88, wife of the late FSO Martin Manch, died on April 5 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. A native of Anniston, Ala., Mrs. Manch was employed by the Navy in 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 83 I N M E M O R Y u u