The Foreign Service Journal, October 2008

ador de Vos then taught at the University of Chicago before moving to Merritt, N.C., and teaching for a year at Eastern Carolina University. In 2006, Amb. de Vos and his wife retired to Grant-Valkaria. A nature lover, he collected seashells, was a birdwatcher and especially enjoyed fishing. Survivors include his wife, Nancy; his nieces, Suzanne (Frank) Kricker and Bonnie Banks; a sister, Lurline de Vos; sisters-in-law Barbara Zwilling, Helen Cline and Priscilla Hoyle; and many nieces, nephews and friends who will miss him. He was preceded in death by his parents, Paul and Suzanne de Vos, and his sister, Gretchen Banks. Dorothy (“Dot”) Eardley , 87, a retired Foreign Service secretary, died of cancer on June 4 at her home in The Village at Brookwood Life Care Community in Burlington, N.C. For 31 years, Mrs. Eardley was a ded- icated, adventurous and highly skilled Foreign Service secretary, who thriv- ed on the challenges of hardship posts and idiosyncratic bosses. After earning a high school diplo- ma and quickly mastering shorthand and typing at a business school in St. Louis, Mrs. Eardley married in 1945 and went to work for a regional rail- road. When her husband Thomas Eardley died just a year after their marriage, she used the small death benefit she received to buy and raise chickens and sell eggs to make ends meet. The enterprise failed when the federal government dumped a huge supply of its stored eggs on the market at 15 cents a dozen, forcing her to sell the chickens instead. Emulating an older sister who had worked for the Navy and then secured a transfer to the State Department, Dorothy applied by mail for a Foreign Service secretarial posi- tion. After a lengthy wait, she was offered an appointment in 1951 as an S-13 clerk-stenographer. She accept- ed and was sent directly to Jakarta, where, despite long hours and cramped housing for junior staff members, she discovered she loved it. Before leaving Indonesia, Mrs. Eardley helped staff the U.S. delega- tion to the Ninth United Nations/ Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East Conference held in Bandung in 1953. She then served in Berlin; Chengmai, a one-officer lis- tening post where her quarters lay on the “opium trail” and where her neighbor, a police officer, ran a broth- el; Paris, which she adored; and Libreville, which she did not (though she boasted of meeting Dr. Albert Schweitzer at his hospital in Lam- baréné). Later assignments included Colombo, Ankara, Ottawa, Jeddah, Johannesburg and Kigali. Along the way, Mrs. Eardley was secretary and confidante to a remark- able succession of career ambassadors and senior diplomats. These included Cecil Lyon, Robert Komer, William J. Handley, WilliamMacomber, William Porter, Randolph Kidder, James Spain and Harry Melone. She also helped host such embassy visitors as Eleanor Roosevelt, Eleanor Lansing Dulles and John, Robert and Edward Ken- nedy. After a series of high-pressure assignments, Mrs. Eardley elected to conclude her career in Rwanda, in a position ranked far below her person- al grade, because it “sounded like a fun post” and she wished to leave the Foreign Service feeling good about it. In Kigali she learned to play volley- ball, played hostess to primatologist Dian Fossey, and taught the youngest and greenest chief of mission in the Service how to organize his work, manage his staff, give coherent dicta- tion and enjoy life in one of the department’s smallest outposts. After retiring in 1980, Mrs. Eardley became an active member of the Foreign Service retirees’ group in the Triangle area of North Carolina where she settled. She loved the camaraderie of its Fourth of July pot- luck gatherings, in particular. Just a month before her death, she attended the group’s quarterly luncheon-lec- ture especially to hear AFSA Presi- dent John Naland speak about the future of “her” Foreign Service. It was her last outing. At the urging of retired FSO J. Edgar Williams, Mrs. Eardley was persuaded to record some of her Foreign Service recollections, as part of the Foreign Affairs Oral History program. Unfortunately, the project was not completed before cancer sapped her strength. But what was captured on tape shows the extraordi- nary joy, courage, humor and enthusi- asm she brought to her work, traits that inspired all around her, friends recall, especially those lucky enough to share an embassy front office with her. Xavier W. “Bill” Eilers , 92, a retired Foreign Service officer, died on June 19 in Silver Spring, Md. Mr. Eilers was born in Clear Lake, Minn. He worked in the private sec- tor before coming to Washington as an aide to Representative Harold Knutson, R-Minn., in 1938. In 1940, he received an appointment as a clerk in the Record Section of the War Department. He entered the Foreign Service in 1941 and was assigned to Embassy Tokyo as a cryptographer. After the outbreak of hostilities, he was taken prisoner along with other embassy O C T O B E R 2 0 0 8 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 75 I N M E M O R Y u u u