The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2022

78 JULY-AUGUST 2022 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL If you would like us to include an obituary in In Memory, please send text to journal@afsa.org. Be sure to include the date, place and cause of death, as well as details of the individual’s Foreign Service career. Please place the name of the AFSA member to be memorialized in the subject line of your email. adventures around the world. He was an important presence in the lives of his nine grandchildren as well, spending time with each of them and inspiring themwith his joie de vivre; his generosity and compas- sion; his lifelong quest to learn; his love of political discourse, music and art; his sense of ceremony and elegance; and his ever-present and impish sense of humor. Mr. Taylor was a prolific poet, penning verse on occasions both great and small for his family, which he affectionally called the Golden Horde, and especially for his wife, whomhe considered his muse. Mr. Taylor is survived by four children and their spouses: John Taylor and Jean- nette Walls, Laurie and Joel Rice, Amy and Jim Scully, and Cynthia and David K. Young (a retired FSO), and nine grandchil- dren and eight great-grandchildren. His beloved wife of 62 years, Betsy Rose, passed away in 2017. It gives the family great comfort to know the two are reunited; they recall he liked to imagine Betsy saying, “What took you so long?” Mr. and Ms. Taylor will be inurned together at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors in a public ceremony on Sept. 19 at 3 p.m. n Dennis EdwardWendel, 75, a retired Foreign Service officer with USAID, passed away suddenly on Dec. 5, 2021, in Falls Church, Va. He was born to parents Mary and ReubenWendel inMarinette, Wis., a farm- ing and shipbuilding community on the shores of Lake Michigan. He attended St. John’s University inMinnesota, major- ing in economics and Spanish, and later received a master’s degree fromCornell University in international development. He also completed coursework for a Ph.D. in sociology at Colorado State University. Mr. Wendel led a life of purpose and service. In 1968 he volunteered for the Peace Corps in Peru, supporting remote Indigenous livelihoods through agricul- tural science and veterinary medicine. From 1971 to 1975, he was a development and civil operations adviser in Vietnam, receiving the USAID Award for Valor, the agency’s second-highest award, in 1975 for his courageous evacuation efforts during the fall of Saigon. The career that he built as a democracy and governance specialist over the ensuing 35 years includes postings to high-profile political transition, conflict, stabilization and reconciliation environments in the Pacific Islands, Iraq, Pakistan, India, Indo- nesia, South Africa, Uganda, Tanzania, Egypt, Jordan, Yemen and Afghanistan. As a water resources specialist in India in the 1980s, he designed and launched an innovative regional irrigation and water management program. As a rural develop- ment specialist in Egypt (1989-1992), he ranmore than 20,000 local development activities in rural schools, water, sanitation and infrastructural development. As acting USAIDmission director and office director of democracy programs in South Africa in the mid-1990s, Mr. Wendel designed and developed crucial civil society programs amid the country’s first multiracial democratic election. In Indonesia, after the end of the Suharto regime, Mr. Wendel was respon- sible for a $28 million USAID program to support election education, national dia- logue, media transparency, and legal and constitutional reform. As senior USAID representative of the regional reconstruc- tion team in the Kurdistan region in Iraq, he led programs in public finance, basic infrastructure, anti-corruption and rule of law activities. At his last post before retirement, as director of the Pacific Islands USAID regional office, he began programs to address climate change and environmen- tal management, gender violence, public health, and to support Fiji’s political transi- tion towardmore democratic governance. In these roles, Mr. Wendel was a beloved team leader who was committed to local solutions. Colleagues remember him as a profound philosopher who excelled in considering the relationship between technical strategies and social theory. In retirement, Mr. Wendel was an avid walker who traversed three miles a day with achy knees and jumped like a frog just so his grandkids would laugh. He was fulfilling a lifelong dreamof rebuilding his family cabin with a view to sunrises over Lake Michigan. Every day, he captivated the family din- ner table with his rigorous consideration of an issue, telling stories and posing ques- tions, all with laughter and humility that is sorely missed. He leaves behind several ongoing projects of the small and large engine variety and a family who thinks the world of him. Mr. Wendel is survived by his cherished wife of 48 years, ChienWendel; son Eric Wendel, an engineering doctoral candi- date; daughter Cristin Kaspar, a pediat- ric nephrologist, her two children and husband; and daughter Delia Wendel, a university professor, and her daughter and husband. He is also survived by two sisters living in his hometown of Marinette, Wis., Mary Kay Selsor and Jayne Drys. n