The Foreign Service Journal, October 2010

O C T O B E R 2 0 1 0 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 71 Bert M. Tollefson Jr. , 80, a former administrator and mission director for USAID and the husband of retired FSO Jeanne M. Kinney, died on Jan. 19 in Sioux Falls, S.D., of cardiac ar- rest. Born on Sept. 3, 1929, in Brookings, S.C., Mr. Tollefson received his educa- tion in Watertown, S.D., graduating from high school in 1947. He attended St. Olaf College for one year before transferring to the University of South Dakota in Vermillion, where he re- ceived his bachelor’s degree. He earned his master’s degree fromAmer- ican University in Washington, D.C. Mr. Tollefson’s administrative ca- reer began in South Dakota, where he served as state director for the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, as the chief aide to Governor Sig Ander- son and as CEO of the South Dakota Highway Commission. From there, he became the top aide to Representative E.Y. Berry, R-S.D., and subsequently served as an assistant to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson. Mr. Tollefson later served as na- tional manager for the Blue Cross, Blue Shield Federal Employee Health Benefits program and as president of the American CornMillers Federation and Export Institute. In 1969, President Richard Nixon appointedMr. Tollefson as assistant ad- ministrator for legislative and public af- fairs in the U.S. Agency for Interna- tional Development. He also served as mission director in Kenya from 1971 to 1972. Following retirement fromUSAID, Mr. Tollefson was a realtor in Phoenix, Ariz. He was politically active and ran for several public offices for the Re- publican Party. Mr. Tollefson was also a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army Re- serves. In 1992, Mr. Tollefson married Jeanne M. Kinney in Davenport, Iowa. The couple lived in Arizona until mov- ing to Sioux Falls in November 2007. He had been previously married to Barbara Rae Wyka inWatertown, S.D. Survivors include his wife, Jeanne M. Kinney, of Phoenix; his children, Scott Tollefson, Reed Eric Tollefson, Nancy Franta and Stephanie Frye; seven grandchildren; and two great- grandchildren. Leonard Unger , 92, a retired FSO and former ambassador, died on June 3 at his home in Sebastopol, Calif. Mr. Unger was born on Dec. 17, 1917, in San Diego, Calif., and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. He attended Har- vard University, majoring in geography, before moving to Washington, D.C., just prior to World War II. At the close of the war, he took up assignments in London and Paris be- fore being assigned to Trieste, where he lived with his wife and three oldest children, working on negotiations to determine that contested city’s status. He then moved to Naples, serving as political adviser to U.S. Admiral Robert Bostwick Carney. Mr. Unger and his family returned to their home in Rockville, Md., in 1953, and he joined the Foreign Serv- ice. In 1958, Mr. Unger was assigned as chargé d’affaires in Bangkok. His next post was just north of Vientiane, where he served as the first U.S. am- bassador immediately following the signing of the 1962 Geneva Accords establishing a neutralist regime in Laos. He served in Washington, D.C., from 1964 to 1967 as deputy assistant secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific before returning to Bangkok as U.S. ambassador. That posting lasted until 1973, when he was assigned as what turned out to be the last U.S. am- bassador in Taipei, before the U.S. shifted its recognition of China to the People’s Republic in early 1979. Ambassador Unger retired from the Foreign Service at that time and, fol- lowing a series of brief teaching posi- tions inWashington, D.C., and Boston, he and his wife, Anne, settled for sev- eral years at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, where he taught and organized a series of conferences on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The couple then returned to their home in Rockville, Md., where they stayed until 2000, when they moved to Santa Rosa (later Sebastopol), Calif., to be closer to three of their five children and most of their grandchildren. In addition to his wife, Anne, of Se- bastopol, Mr. Unger is survived by five children, nine grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. ■ I N M E M O R Y Send your In Memory submission to journal@afsa.org