The Foreign Service Journal, September 2020

84 SEPTEMBER 2020 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL ment of the Al-Azhar English Language Resource Center in Cairo. In retirement, Mr. Scholz continued to support RELOs in the field and took on short-termprojects in Panama, Israel and Eritrea. He also traveled for leisure, which included visiting Mongolia, a lifelong goal of his. He is survived by his wife, Celeste; his daughters, Kristina (and her husband, J.R. Dodge) and Liz (and her husband, Mike Mommsen); sisters, Georgianne and April (and her partner, Christine DeCosmo); and in-laws, nieces and nephews, cousins and friends worldwide. n Blaine Carlson Tueller , 90, a retired Foreign Service officer, died on June 7 in Lehi, Utah. Mr. Tueller was born on June 1, 1930, in Logan, Utah, the first child of Elva Geneva Carlson and Lamont Edwin Tueller. The family moved to Cedar City, Utah, in 1932. Other than his junior year of education at Logan High School, he attended public schools in Cedar City. He met his future wife, Jean Marie Heywood, in the ninth grade. After serving as a missionary in the Netherlands from 1950 to 1953, he enlisted for two years in the U.S. Army and was assigned to Fort Meade, Md. After discharge, he earned his bachelor’s degree in history and political science, with summa cum laude honors, at Utah State University. In 1957 Mr. Tueller joined the U.S. For- eign Service. His first posting was Ireland, followed by an assignment in Austria. He subsequently served in Morocco, Venezuela, Panama, the Philippines and Spain. He retired in 1986 as a member of the Senior Foreign Service with more than 30 years of government service. In retirement, Mr. Tueller worked for many years for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a special represen- tative for international issues. Between 1993 and 1996, as mission president in the Greece Athens Mission, he helped congregations and church members in Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt and Albania. He read novels, histories, the daily newspaper and magazines. Wherever he lived, he knew where the library was. He was also a tenor in choirs, and for his 80th birthday, he sang with the famed Mormon Tabernacle Choir. His wife, Jean Marie, preceded him in death on Aug. 14, 2019. Mr. Tueller is survived by his sister, Diane Tueller Bickmore; his brothers, Bennion Lamont Tueller and Rodney Edwin Tueller; his children, Jan Tueller Lowman, Anna Tueller Stone, Matthew Heywood Tueller, Marie Tueller Emmett, Diane Tueller Pritchett, Martha Tueller Barrett, Elisabeth Tueller Dearden, James Blaine Tueller, Rachel Tueller and Jeanne Tueller Krumperman; 30 grandchildren; and 20 great-grandchildren. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Blaine Carlson and Jean Marie Heywood Tueller Scholarship at Utah Valley University. n Martin Wenick, 80, a retired For- eign Service officer, died on May 7 at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Wash- ington, D.C., due to complications from COVID-19. Born in 1939 in Jersey City, N.J., Mr. Wenick grew up in Caldwell, N.J., and graduated from Grover Cleveland High School in 1957. He then attended Brown University, majoring in history. In the summer of 1960, Mr. Wenick received a partial Carnegie Mellon grant for a summer Russian language study program that included four weeks in Moscow. He was there during the trial of Francis Gary Powers, the pilot of a downed U-2 spy plane, and the experi- ence kindled his interest in further study of the Soviet Union. Graduating from Brown in 1961, Mr. Wenick joined the Foreign Service the following year. He served overseas in Kabul, Prague (two tours), Moscow and Rome. Assigned to Washington from 1978 to 1980, he met Alice Tetelman in 1979, when she was working as chief of staff for a New York congressman; they mar- ried a year later. Mr. Wenick’s diplomatic career included a teaching stint at the National War College and service as deputy chief of mission in Prague, director of the Office of Northern European Affairs, director of the Office of Eastern Euro- pean and Yugoslav Affairs and deputy assistant secretary of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research for Coordina- tion. He retired from the State Depart- ment in 1989. From 1989 to 1992, Mr. Wenick served as executive director of the National Con- ference on Soviet Jewry before joining HIAS, an international Jewish nonprofit agency that assists refugees. He was executive director there until 1998. In his later years, Mr. Wenick and his wife lived in the Washington, D.C., area and rented out vacation homes in Italy, a home-based business driven by their passion for travel. Colleagues and friends recall Mr. Wenick’s work on behalf of Jewish refuseniks in the Soviet Union, who were barred from emigrating, and his work with dissidents in Prague. Many remem- ber his dry wit and warmth, his genuine- ness and kind spirit, and his care and concern for others. Mr. Wenick is survived by his wife of 40 years, Alice. n