The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2022

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2022 75 earned a bachelor’s degree inmathematics from the University of San Francisco. He began working in the Bay Area. Eventually, he obtained a master’s degree in business administration before embark- ing on a lifelong career with USAID. From 1979 to 1999, he served as an auditor and a project development officer with postings in Kenya, Senegal, Egypt andWashington. After 1999, he continued working for USAID as a contractor through Cape Fox Facilities Services, serving both as a programofficer and as a chief of party. Mr. Marr’s last engagement with USAID began in 2010 as an assignment and career counselor for program and project development officers in the Bureau for Human Capital and Talent Management. He served concurrently as the foreign language training adviser for the Develop- ment Leadership Initiative and the Career Candidate Corps. In 1980 Mr. Marr met Gloria Jean Zengler at Our Lady of Angels Catholic Church inWoodbridge, Va. The pair were married the following year and went on to have three children. A devout Catholic, Mr. Marr felt a special devotion to the BlessedMother. He loved his work and his family, and had hobbies such as traveling, studying history, flying planes and reading. He also enjoyed the great outdoors (especially hiking), sports (especially football), computers, cooking, craft beer, international cuisine and pie. Mr. Marr was predeceased by his parents; his brother, Jeffery Marr; and his sister, Julie Marr. He is survived by his wife of 41 years, Jean; sons Andy (and wife Glaucia), Alan (and wife Meaghan) and Aaron (and wife Beth); six grandchildren, Lucas, Logan, Hector, Avery, Theodore and Eulalia; a sis- ter, Dolores Marr; six nieces and nephews; and 15 great-nieces and great-nephews. n Francis Joseph “Frank” Meehan, 98, a retired Foreign Service officer and former ambassador, died on May 7, 2022, at his home in Helensburgh, Scotland. Mr. Meehan was born in East Orange, N.J., and grew up in Clydebank, Scotland, where, as a teenager, he took part in clean- up operations after Luftwaffe air raids. He earned an M.A. in history at Glasgow University and was already fluent in German before joining the U.S. Army and being assigned to Germany in 1945. After his discharge in 1947, he became a clerk at the American consul- ate in Bremen. The following year he moved to Washington, where he worked for the Economic Cooperation Administration, which administered the Marshall Plan. In 1951 Mr. Meehan joined the Foreign Service and was assigned to Frankfurt, then to Hamburg and Paris/ NATO before returning to the U.S. in 1956 to study at Harvard. He received a master’s degree in public administration in 1957 and entered the Department of State’s Russian language and area studies program. He was initially assigned to the Bureau of Intelligence and Research before get- ting his long-desired posting to Moscow. In 1961 Mr. Meehan transferred to Berlin just in time to see the Berlin Wall go up. His close working relationship with East German lawyer and East-West spy exchange negotiator Wolfgang Vogel ensured the release of American student Frederic Pryor from an East Berlin prison cell at the same time as the spy swap of Francis Gary Powers for Colonel Abel at the “bridge of spies” in 1962. Mr. Meehan was promoted to head the Eastern Affairs section of the Berlin mission; he was the principal American liaison with the Soviet authorities in East Berlin and Potsdam, as well as with the East German government, which the U.S. government did not recognize until 1974. He then became deputy chief of mis- sion at U.S. Embassy Budapest in 1968. In 1972 Mr. Meehan returned to Germany as political counselor at Embassy Bonn. From there he moved to Vienna, as deputy chief of mission, in 1975. In 1977, he went back to Bonn as deputy chief of mission. President Jimmy Carter appointed Frank Meehan ambassador to Czechoslo- vakia in 1979 and then, a year later, ambas- sador to Poland. He was inWarsaw for the historic rise of the Solidarity movement. Caught inWashington for consulta- tions when General Wojciech Jaruzelski declaredmartial law in 1981, Amb. Mee- han was smuggled back into Poland in the back of a diplomatic van. Amb. Meehan’s last diplomatic assign- ment was as ambassador to the German Democratic Republic, appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1985. Once again, he dealt with East German spy- exchanger Wolfgang Vogel and was on the East German side of the “bridge of spies” with Natan Sharansky when the Russian champion of freedom crossed over to the West in 1986. In 1989, after a career spanning four decades of the ColdWar, Amb. Meehan retired to Scotland. There, he followed international developments and U.S. politics closely, indulged his gardening skills—honed at somany homes over the years—and attracted visits by his wide- spread family members. He was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree by GlasgowUniversity in 1986 and was the subject of a BBC Scotland documentary in 2017. Ambassador Meehan was predeceased by his wife, Margaret Kearns Meehan, in 2015. He is survived by his children, Anne, Catherine, Frances and Jim; seven grand- children; and four great-grandchildren.