The Foreign Service Journal, September 2013

86 SEPTEMBER 2013 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL IN MEMORY as consul general in Bordeaux and political counselor at the U.S. Mission to the European Communities. From 1975 to 1979, Mr. Barbis was political officer in Athens during strug- gles that resulted in Greece’s return to NATO. Then, back in Washington, he advised three successive chiefs of staff of the U.S. Army on foreign policy and national security from 1980 to 1989. Mr. Barbis retired from the Foreign Service in 1992. He was a recipient of the State Department’s Superior Honor Award. Mr. and Mrs. Barbis lived in St. Michaels, Md., from 1990 to 2010. There they made many friends through participation in the Academy Art Museum, the Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival, the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, Christ Church, the Miles River Yacht Club and the Har- bourtowne Golf and Resort. In 2010 they moved to Evergreen Woods in North Branford, Conn., to be near their children. Mr. Barbis is survived by his wife of 56 years, Patricia Quinn Barbis, of Bran- ford, Conn.; a son, Michael Barbis of Rowayton, Conn.; a daughter, Dina Bar- bis Tresnan (and her husband, Paul) of Old Lyme, Conn,; four grandsons, Liam, Callum, Angus and Skyler; a brother, Bill, of Fresno, Calif.; and several cous- ins in California, Hawaii and Greece. Memorial contributions may be made to the Senior Living Foundation of the American Foreign Service, 1716 N Street NW, Washington DC 20036, or the American Heart Association (www. heart.org/HEARTORG/Giving/). n David M. Burns , 84, a retired Foreign Service officer with the U.S. Information Agency who later became an executive with the American Asso- n George Milton Barbis, 86, a retired Foreign Service officer, died of pneumonia on May 24 at Yale New Haven Hospital in New Haven, Conn. Mr. Barbis was born in Visalia, Calif., to parents of Greek origin. In 1937 his mother took him and a younger brother, Milton, to visit Greece, where they were stranded during World War II under the Italian and German occu- pations. There he attended Athens College, graduating in 1944 from the Lyceum in Xilokastron, and so was flu- ent in Greek. Following repatriation to the United States, Mr. Barbis entered the U.S. Army and received an honorable discharge. He earned a bachelor’s degree in international relations from the Uni- versity of California at Berkeley in 1950 and a master’s degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in 1952. He later attended the National War College. Mr. Barbis joined the Foreign Ser- vice at the State Department in 1950. His first posting was Tehran, where he witnessed the rise of nationalism lead- ing to nationalization of the oil fields and eviction of the British. From 1953 to 1956, at the end of the Korean War, he served as an economic and political officer in Seoul, where he met his future wife, Patricia Quinn, who worked in cultural affairs at the embassy. She was his lifetime partner and served with him at all his posts. Mr. Barbis then spent five years as consul in Chiang Mai, where he moni- tored the movements of nomadic hill tribes with political implications in the Golden Triangle bordering Laos, Burma and China. He served as an analyst in Washing- ton before a series of European post- ings starting in the late l960s, including ciation for the Advancement of Science, and who also founded a jazz band, died on May 13 at Capital Caring Hospice in Arlington County, Va., of an intracranial hemorrhage. David Mitchell Burns was born in Pineville, Ky., and came to Washington at age 15. As a teenager, he worked as an elevator operator at the U.S. Capitol. He served as an Air Force cryptogra- pher in the late 1940s. He was a 1953 graduate of Princeton University and received a Fulbright grant to study in Salzburg, Austria. In 1955 Mr. Burns joined the U.S. Information Agency. He served over- seas in Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Mali, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and what is now Zimbabwe. After retiring from the Foreign Ser- vice in 1977, Mr. Burns became director of a project exploring climate change at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He retired a second time in 1990. In 1972, Mr. Burns founded the Hot Mustard Jazz Band. He was the group’s leader, trombonist and singer. The popular local band performed swing music and performed at the Kennedy Center and the British Embassy, as well as overseas in Jakarta, Sumatra and Bali. In a March 2002 FSJ review of the group’s fourth CD, “Rainbow Room: Songs of the Art Deco Era,” Steve Honley observed: “Burns is as adept at playing the trombone and keeping the up-tempo numbers dancing along (à la Glenn Miller) as he is at lovingly crooning the ballads. And he has strong backing from the instrumentalists, who play the skillful arrangements by Chuck Redd (who also plays vibes in the band) with authentic stylishness.” Mr. Burns was a member of the National Book Critics Circle and wrote