The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2012

J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 1 2 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 69 Colleen M. Hart , 82, wife of the late FSO Richard R. Hart, died peace- fully on April 22 in Sarasota, Fla. Colleen Hart was born on Dec. 1, 1929, in Stroh-LaGrange, Ind. She married Richard R. Hart in July 1955 and put him through Chinese studies by operating her own beauty salon. Thereafter, she followed him to Wash- ington, D.C., and provided elegant sup- port to further his career as a Foreign Service officer. They served in Japan, Taiwan, Nepal, Hong Kong, Thailand and China. When Mr. Hart retired from the Foreign Service in 1984, the couple settled in Sarasota. There Mrs. Hart was actively involved with the Sarasota Institute of Life Time Learning, be- coming the longest-serving volunteer after 27 fun-filled years. She was also a member and volunteer at the Church of the Palms. Colleen Hart was predeceased by her husband of 55 years, Richard, in 2010. She is survived by three children, FSO Amy Vrampas (and her husband, Cosmas) of Muscat, Oman; Scott Hart (and his wife, Leola) of Leicester, N.C.; Janmarie Chatlosh (and her husband, Jeff) of Florence, S.C.; six grandchil- dren, Jason Chatlosh (and his wife, Meagan) and Justin Chatlosh of Flo- rence, S.C.; George and Alexandra Vrampas of Muscat; Brie and Zack Hart of Leicester, N.C.; two sisters, MadelineMcKinley (and her husband, William) of Muncie, Ind., and DeVeta Householder of Huntington, Ind. The family thanks Mrs. Hart’s many friends for their warm and generous support over the last fewmonths. Me- morial donations can be made in her name to the Sarasota Institute of Life Time Learning (SILL) or the Church of the Palms in Sarasota, Fla.; McLeod Hospice House in Florence, S.C., or the Cancer Society Darrell A. Jenks , 54, a retired For- eign Service officer, died on May 14 in Baltimore, Md., after a yearlong strug- gle with cancer. Mr. Jenks received his bachelor’s de- gree in French from Reed College in 1979, and went on to earn an M.A. in political science from the University del Zulia inMaracaibo, anM.A. in national security and strategic studies from the Naval War College and, later, a Ph.D. in the ethics of science fiction from Salve Regina University. In 1981, he entered the Foreign Service. During a 30-year diplomatic career, Mr. Jenks was posted to Belize (where he met his wife, Thelma), Tokyo, Shanghai, Beijing, Maracaibo, Kaohsiung, Brasilia, Seoul andMaysan. His last assignment was as director of the Foreign Service Institute Japanese Language School in Yokohama, from which he retired in 2011. Fluent in French, Spanish, Por- tuguese, Mandarin, Taiwanese, Korean and Japanese, he also gained a working knowledge of Arabic during a year leading a Provincial Reconstruction Team in Iraq. He received numerous awards from the State Department, in- cluding the Secretary’s Award for Ex- cellence in Public Diplomacy. Colleagues and friends remember Mr. Jenks as a dynamo of spirit and cre- ativity of an especially exploratory and interactive kind. He was a gifted jazz drummer: in addition to a stint in New York City’s Loft Scene in the 1970s, he formed bands almost everywhere he went, playing drums with an experi- mental and polyrhythmic style that mixed well with both progressive and traditional musicians in Taiwan, China, Brazil and Korea. One colleague recalls watching a (literally) fiery performance of Mr. Jenks’ band Tianchuang (roughly, “Sky- light”) near an abandoned factory on the outskirts of Beijing that climaxed in the burning of a giant stylized skylight, sending flames and sparks hundreds of feet into the air and leaving the audi- ence stunned. Transformational diplo- macy at its most dramatic! The fiery skylight aptly symbolized the elemental nature of Mr. Jenks’ spirit, this colleague recalls. He had the unnerving habit of diving into almost any pool of water he came across: the Amazon, the glowing blue water at the bottom of a copper mine, a black pool at the bottom of a cave, or a river in the Brazilian backwoods in the middle of the night. In the same spirit, he plunged into cultures — Chinese, Brazilian, Tai- wanese, Japanese. For Mr. Jenks, one colleague recalls, there was no such thing as a boring place, or a boring per- son — he knew that if he persisted, if he went a little deeper, he would find the one thing that made that place, that person, that culture fascinating. Mr. Jenks is survived by his wife, Thelma, of Baltimore; his daughter Desiree, now an officer in the 82nd Airborne based at Fort Bragg, NC; his son Christopher, also serving in the U.S. Army at Fort Bragg; two brothers, Mark of Kirkland, Wash., and Andrew of Cypress, Calif.; an uncle, Lawrence Hochstein of Las Vegas, Nev.; and his parents, George and Zoya Jenks of Lewisburg, Pa. Condolences may be sent via the Mitchell-Wiedefeld Funeral Home at www.mwfuneralhome.com/obituaries/ Darrell-Jenks/. In lieu of flowers, do- nations may be made to the Alvin & I N M E M O R Y