The Foreign Service Journal, October 2006

H. Freeman Matthews Jr. , 78, a retired FSO and former president of the American Foreign Service Asso- ciation, died on July 22 at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, D.C., of renal failure. Harrison Freeman Matthews Jr. was born in Bogota, the son of a dis- tinguished FSO. His father, who had served as chargé to the French gov- ernment in Vichy, was the first FSO to be named under secretary of State for political affairs. He was chief of mis- sion to three European posts during and after World War II, and was among the first cohort of four to be promoted to career ambassador in 1956. “Free” Matthews grew up in Havana and Paris before graduating from the Lawrenceville School in 1945 and Princeton University in 1950. He served in the U.S. Army in both World War II and the Korean War, and joined the Foreign Service in 1952. Palermo was his first posting, where he served as a refugee relief officer. He received his Foreign Service commis- sion later that year, and transferred to Zurich in 1955. In 1959 he returned to State as a personnel officer. He was assigned to Madrid in 1963. In 1964, Mr. Matthews was appointed chief of the political section in Saigon. He returned to Washington in 1966 to spend four years as director of the Vietnam Working Group. In the early 1970s, he was political coun- selor at the U.S. embassy in Mexico City and later served as deputy chief of mission in Cairo. There he played a role in the Middle East peace negotia- tions led by President Jimmy Carter, between Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, that produced the Camp David Peace Accords in 1978. That same year, Mr. Matthews retired as a senior inspector in the Office of the Inspector General. He subsequently did consulting for the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, and represented the department on task forces and committees reviewing the Iran-Contra hearings. Mr. Matthews was a resident of Chevy Chase, Md., for almost 50 years. He was a member of St. John’s Episcopal Church Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C., the American For- eign Service Association, DACOR (where he served as chairman of the Welfare Committee), the Chevy Chase Club and the Metropolitan Club. He also served on the board of what is now the Wildlife Trust, and volunteered at Washington National Cathedral and Meals on Wheels. Survivors include his wife of 56 years, Nancy Henneberger Matthews of Chevy Chase, Md.; four children, Luke Matthews of Houston, Texas, John Matthews of Lyon, France, Navy Capt. Timothy Matthews of Jackson- ville, Fla., and Elizabeth Johns of Woodville, Va.; and 10 grandchildren. Donations in his name may be made to the Washington Humane Society (www.washhumane.org ). David Gulick Nes , 89, a retired FSO, died of cancer on May 27 at his home in the Green Spring Valley of Maryland. Mr. Nes was born in York, Pa. He was a 1935 graduate of the Gilman School in Baltimore, Md., and earned a B.A. degree in history at Princeton University in 1939. He undertook graduate studies at Harvard in inter- national law and international trade and finance, and then worked as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun before passing the Foreign Service exam in 1941. He joined the Department of State in 1942 as a divisional assistant. Taking a military leave in 1943, Mr. Nes enlisted in the U.S. Army, where he rose to the rank of captain and served as a Command Pack Artillery Battery Commander in the North Burma Campaign, winning a Bronze Star, four Battle Stars and other awards. Mr. Nes joined the Foreign Service in 1946, and was assigned to Glasgow as a vice consul. From 1949 to 1952, he served in Paris with the Economic Cooperation Administration and also as special assistant to Ambassador David Bruce, before returning to Washington to serve as assistant direc- tor of the Trieste Task Force. From 1954 to 1956, he was posted to Tripoli as DCM. He again returned to the department, first as the officer in charge of Korean affairs and then as a politico-military adviser on African affairs. In 1959 Mr. Nes was posted to Rabat, where he served as DCM until 1962, when he was detailed to the Imperial Defence College in London. In 1964, Mr. Nes was posted to Saigon as DCM, with the personal rank of minister. According to an oral history Mr. Nes gave at Georgetown University, Gen William Westmore- land arrived shortly after he did, and the two traveled together by air throughout South Vietnam. During that tour Mr. Nes concluded that “it would be difficult, if not virtually impossible” to defeat the communists without a full-scale occupation of North Vietnam. “My departure from Saigon was sudden and unexpected,” Mr. Nes wrote of that assignment’s end later in 1964, when his boss, Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., returned to the U.S. as an unexpected write-in winner in New Hampshire’s Republi- can presidential primary. Mr. Nes attended the Senior Management Seminar and undertook French-language training at FSI prior to being posted, in 1965, to Cairo as O C T O B E R 2 0 0 6 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 91 I N M E M O R Y