The Foreign Service Journal, September 2014

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER 2014 73 Mae (and her husband, Frank) Weis; and numerous nieces and nephews. n Robert H. Kranich, 100, a retired Foreign Service officer and Army colonel, died onMay 14 at Winchester Medical Center inWinchester, Va. Born in Bucyrus, Ohio, Mr. Kranich received a B.A. fromHeidelberg College in 1934, and went on to attend the University of Chicago from 1935 to 1937. He married Chloris Coates in Chicago, Ill., in 1941. Mr. Kranich was a teacher with the Chi- cago Board of Education and held various other positions until joining the U.S. Army in 1943, serving until 1946. From 1946 to 1948, he served as a captain and international aid officer for the Department of the Army. In the private sector from 1950 to 1958, he was president of an export-import firm and a consultant to the Department of Agriculture. On July 12, 1950, Mr. Kranich joined the State Department, where he served as a foreign affairs officer in the Office of European Regional Affairs. In 1954, he was appointed head of the North Atlantic Treaty Economic andMilitary Assistance Affairs Office. In 1955, he served as an aide to Secre- tary of State John Foster Dulles and was commissioned as an FSO. He was detailed to the National War College for the 1955- 1956 academic year. His first overseas posting was to Bonn, where he served as first secretary, then international relations officer (1957-1961). In 1963, Mr. Kranich was seconded to the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency at the State Department, where he served until 1969, having become chief of the Political Affairs Division. During this period, he helped to negotiate the Strategic Arms Limitation and Nuclear Non-Prolif- eration Treaties. In his last overseas posting, Mr. Kranich served as political adviser to General David C. Jones, commander of the U.S. Air Force, Europe, inWiesbaden. His earlier experi- ence in NATOwas instrumental in this assignment, and he became part of Gen. Jones’ international planning team. Col. Kranich retired from the Army Reserve in 1966 and from the Foreign Service in 1974. After retirement, he and his wife, Chloris, settled in Strasburg, Va., on a large farm. There, Mr. Kranich designed and constructed one of the first solar-powered homes in Northern Virginia and became involved in volunteer activity on behalf of environmental and other causes. In 1988, he co-foundedThe Friends of the North Fork of the Shenandoah River, a nonprofit organization that advocates for improved water quality and protection of the North Fork and its tributaries. In 1990, he founded Job Opportuni- ties Boost Shenandoah, a local volunteer agency that attempted to link job seekers with employers. He was also a founder of the Cedar Creek Fish & Chowder Society and a contributor to the Free Press , writ- ing environmental and political columns under the pen name “B. Cyrus Kidd.” For the last several years of his life, Mr. Kranich was a resident of Westminster Canterbury inWinchester, Va. Mr. Kranich was predeceased by his first wife, Chloris; a daughter, Chloris; and a son, William. He is survived by his daughter, Robin; his wife of 10 years, Roberta Hinkins Kranich, and her son, George Hinkins III. He is also survived by a step-daughter, Nicki Furlan de Medici, the daughter of his wife of two years, Mary Furlan Kranich, and her two daughters, Laura Bentley and Marina de Medici; his sister-in-law, Gloria Kranich; a nephew, James Kranich Jr.; and nieces, Christy Kane and Frances Ellen Kranich and their families. n Joseph E. (Jay) Lake Jr. , 49, the son of retired FSO Ambassador Joseph E. Lake, died on June 1 at his home inMilwaukie, Ore., five days before his 50th birthday, fol- lowing a six-year, hard-fought battle with colon cancer. Mr. Lake was born on June 6, 1964, in Taipei, during his father’s first Foreign Ser- vice tour. He accompanied his father and stepmother, Jo Ann Kessler Lake, on tours in Dahomey (now part of Benin), Taiwan, Nigeria and Bulgaria. He graduated from the Plan II Honors Program at the University of Texas at Aus- tin in 1986 and pursued work in advertis- ing andmarketing in the IT industry. He holds a patent for a system tomanage multimedia communication and had another pending for a system for managing leases of property. In 1993, Mr. Lake married Susan Mendes. The couple added daughter Bron- wyn Ariadne Qiu Ju Lake to the family in 1998, when they adopted her fromChina. A prolific writer, Mr. Lake made his publishing debut in the science fiction and fantasy genre in 2001. He publishedmore than 300 short stories and 10 novels, with more underway at the time of his death. His writing has been translated intomany languages and garnered acclaim reviews in Publishers Weekly and Booklist . Mr. Lake was a first-place quarterfinal- ist in the Writers of the Future Contest in 2003, and he received the JohnW. Camp- bell Award for Best NewWriter in 2004. He documented his experiences with disease and wrote about topics ranging frompho- tography to politics on his popular website and top-25 science fiction blog. Diagnosed with colon cancer in 2008, Mr. Lake utilized his writing ability to blog about the emotional and psychological toll of a terminal diagnosis, and his journey through traditional chemotherapy and experimental immunotherapy treatments