The Foreign Service Journal, September 2009

S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 9 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 75 Mr. Stratmon was predeceased by his first wife, of 50 years, Freddie Mae Stratmon. He is survived by his wife, Lillian, whom he married in 1999, of Holly Springs; two daughters, Rev. Laurice Stewart and Wisilla Jordan of Washington, D.C.; two sons, David Stratmon of Atwater, Calif., and James Stratmon of Durham, N.C.; two stepchildren, Lorenzo Guerrero of Memphis, Tenn., and Jeanne Gerrero of Lousiville, Ky.; eight grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. Kingdon W. Swayne , 88, a teacher, mayor and former FSO, died on April 22 at Sunrise at Flora Vale, an assisted living community in Yardley, Pa., of Alzheimer’s disease. Mr. Swayne was born in 1920 on the campus of the Quaker George School in Newtown Township, Pa., the son of two teachers there. He gradu- ated from the school in 1937 and earned his bachelor’s degree cum laude at Harvard University in 1941. He then served in the Army during World War II, rising to infantry captain with the Third Army of Gen. George Patton and earning a Bronze Star. In 1946, Mr. Swayne began a 20- year career with the Foreign Service. His first assignment was in London, is- suing “immigration visas to the thou- sands of GI brides waiting to join their husbands,” he later wrote. From 1949 to 1951, he served in China as a con- sular officer. After studying Japanese at Yale University, he worked in Washington and in Japan from 1953 to 1963. As Walter F. Naedele reported in the Philadelphia Inquirer , the high point of this period was a Kennedy White House luncheon at which Mr. Swayne was translator for the Japanese prime minister and, he wrote, for “the two ladies he sat between — Jackie Kennedy and Mamie Eisenhower.” Mr. Swayne left the Foreign Serv- ice in 1966 after serving as head of the political-economic section of Embassy Rangoon. In 1967, he settled in his home- town of Newtown, Pa., earned a mas- ter’s degree from Lehigh University and began a second 20-year career as a history and political science teacher I N M E M O R Y