The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2010

J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 1 0 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 81 he was assigned as the chief of USAID’s Capital Development Office in Bogota. In 1978, Mr. Suma took up a chal- lenging assignment in Managua. Dur- ing his two-year tour of duty, a period of national political turmoil which in- cluded the last year of the Somoza dy- nasty and the first year of the Sand- inista regime, he oversaw the imple- mentation of a $100 million project to reconstruct facilities destroyed by the civil war. Mr. Suma was subsequently post- ed to Cairo, where he served as the di- rector of the Office of Finance and Investment from 1980 to 1986. Dur- ing this period, he managed USAID’s largest overseas private sector devel- opment program and played an im- portant role in increasing funding for private-sector projects in Egypt. In 1987, he was assigned as chief of the Office of Private Sector Devel- opment in Panama. This posting was cut short by Panamanian President Manuel Noriega’s termination of the USAID program. Upon his return to Washington, Mr. Suma served in the Bureau of Latin American and Carib- bean Affairs until his retirement from the Foreign Service in 1989. He re- ceived numerous citations and merit awards during his career. In retirement, Mr. Suma remain- ed active. He worked as a consultant with various companies until 1995. A fanatical BMW owner, he collected cars. He also enjoyed gardening, in- vesting, participating in Virginia poli- tics and boating on the Chesapeake. Mr. Suma is survived by his wife, P. Becky Suma, of McLean, Va., and two grown children, who reside in Sao Paulo and Washington, D.C. Rush Walker Taylor Jr. , 75, a re- tired FSO and former ambassador, died on March 7 at the Capital Hos- pice in Arlington, Va. Mr. Taylor was born in Little Rock, Ark. His family moved to Crockett, Texas, when he was 9 years old. He attended Harvard University, where he received his bachelor’s degree, and the University of Virginia, where he earned his J.D. Mr. Taylor served in the U.S. Army I N M E M O R Y