The Foreign Service Journal, September 2019

82 SEPTEMBER 2019 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Womack, and his wife, Lili, of Jupiter, Fla.; a granddaughter, Hayley Womack of Newport Beach, Calif.; numerous nieces and nephews; and her beloved canine companion, Reggie. Condolences may be sent to Brown & Sons Funeral Homes & Crematory, www .brownandsonsfuneral.com. n Brynhild C. Rowberg, 101, a retired Foreign Service officer, passed away on May 17 at the Care Center of the North- field Retirement Community in North- field, Minn. Ms. Rowberg was born on Aug. 26, 1917, in Northfield, Minn., the daughter of Andrew and Marie (Rollag) Rowberg. She graduated fromNorthfield High School in 1935 and from St. Olaf College in 1939. In 1941 Brynhild Rowberg moved to Washington, D.C., to work for the State Department. She joined the Foreign Ser- vice in February 1945 and was assigned to the London staff of the Office of the Politi- cal Adviser to the Commanding General for Austria. Because Austria was still in German hands, the office prepared for the even- tual occupation of that country. Ms. Rowberg traveled to the United Kingdom in a 90-ship convoy that was attacked, unsuccessfully, by a U-boat. She was in London during the last raid on the city by the Luftwaffe, when V-2 rockets fell frequently. In March 1945 U.S. strategy changed, and officials decided that Austria would be occupied by troops coming from the south, so the staff, including Ms. Rowberg, was transferred to Allied Headquarters for the MediterraneanTheater at Caserta, Italy. Following the end of the war in May 1945, the detachment was transferred first to Florence, then Verona, then Salzburg, as they awaited the conclusion of negotia- tions with the Soviets regarding the occu- pation of Austria. When the agreement was reached in August, the detachment moved to Vienna. Ms. Rowberg served in Vienna until 1950, when she was transferred to Prague. In 1952, she moved to Athens, and in 1956 to Saigon. In 1956 she was commissioned as a Foreign Service officer. From 1958 to 1962, she served in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the State Department, leaving that position in 1962 to become the U.S. consul in Bremen. In 1967 she began working as a politi- cal officer in the Office of Korean Affairs in Washington, D.C., involved almost exclusively in the negotiations with North Korea that led to release of the crew of the USS Pueblo , which had been captured by the North Koreans. In 1971 she became deputy chief of the economic section and military assistance officer at the U.S. embassy in Taipei. She remained there until a sudden, devastat- ing hearing loss compelled her to retire. After living for a time in Northern Virginia, she moved in 1978 to Northfield to care for her elderly mother. There she served as president of the local League of Women Voters and in various capacities at St. John’s Lutheran Church, and was active in several other organizations. She wrote the introduction to a book published by the Norwegian-American Historical Association, as well as several articles for the Minnesota Historical Society, and was a speaker at the society’s 2005 commemoration of the end of World War II. Ms. Rowberg received the Distin- guished Alumni Award from St. Olaf College in 1967 and the Distinguished Alumni Award fromNorthfield High School in 2001. She was preceded in death by her parents and her brother, Leland, who was killed in military action in 1944. She is survived by several cousins. Memorial gifts in Ms. Rowberg’s memory may be made to St. Olaf College, St. John’s Lutheran Church or the North- field Historical Society. n John A. Sanbrailo, 75, a retired Foreign Service officer with USAID, passed away peacefully at his home in Vienna, Va., on April 20. Mr. Sanbrailo was born in San Fran- cisco, Calif., in 1944. He graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a degree in economics and interna- tional relations. He also received master’s degrees from San Francisco State Univer- sity in economic development and inter- national relations in 1969 and from the Kennedy School at Harvard University in public administration in 1976. Mr. Sanbrailo served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Venezuela from 1966 to 1968. He began his USAID career in 1969 in Quito, and moved to Managua after the 1972 earthquake. He subsequently served in USAID’s Latin American Bureau and as USAID mission director in Ecuador, Peru, Hon- duras, El Salvador and again in Ecuador before retiring in 1997. During his Foreign Service career Mr. Sanbrailo rose to the rank of Career Minister and received four presidential awards for assisting Honduras in efforts to restructure its economy in the 1980s and for supporting the El Salvador peace accords in the 1990s. After retirement he worked as a consultant for the World Bank, the Inter- American Development Bank and the Ecuadorian government between 1997 and 1999. He then served as chief execu- tive officer of the Pan American Develop-