The Foreign Service Journal, October 2012

66 OCTOBER 2012 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL IN MEMORY R agaei Abdelfattah , 43, an FSO on his second tour with USAID, was killed in the line of duty in Afghani- stan’s Konar province on Aug. 8 in a terrorist attack by a suicide bomber. Abdelfattah had been working there with local officials to establish schools and health clinics and to deliver electricity. Mr. Abdelfattah was born in Giza and grew up in Cairo, where he stud- ied architecture at Ain Shams Univer- sity. He worked in urban planning and ecotourism development in Egypt and led a project for the U.N. Development Program before arriving in the United States shortly before Sept. 11, 2001. At first he pursued a Ph.D. at Vir- ginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., but then took a job with the Maryland-National Capital Parks and Planning Com- mission in Prince George’s County to support his young family. There he became a supervisor and was regarded as a rising star. As one of his colleagues told the Washington Post , Mr. Abdelfattah was “very smart, very passionate about community development, very knowl- edgeable.” And, she emphasized, “he was really a people person who took time to get to know his co-workers.” Mr. Abdelfattah became a natu- ralized citizen several years ago. He loved everything about the United States, friends recall, including bad chain restaurants and suburbia. “I used to joke with him that he was even more American than I was,” his wife, Angela Ruppe, told the Post . Because he had worked as a con- tractor with USAID officials in Egypt, he began to think seriously of working with the agency again and applied for a position. He was offered Afghanistan and took it, returning recently for a second tour. “He felt like he was doing reward- ing development work,” his wife told the Post . “He spoke to me many times about the relationships he was build- ing. It was fulfilling.” A member of a Provincial Recon- struction Team in eastern Afghani- stan, Mr. Abdelfattah played a leading role in the Highway Seven Economic Corridor Strategy, a critical effort designed to increase economic activ- ity along the highway linking Torkham Gate with Kabul. During his posting, Mr. Abdelfattah kept in touch with family and friends, including his former colleagues in Prince George’s County, and planned to take the American Institute of Certi- fied Planners exam in November. “Ragaei died a hero—in service to our country and our agency’s mission of providing help to those in need and advancing our national security,” USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah said in a statement on Aug. 9. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton praised Mr. Abdelfattah’s work as “an example of the highest standards of service,” and condemned the attack that took his life. Mr. Abdelfattah’s first marriage ended in divorce. He is survived by his wife of three years, Angela Ruppe, and two teenage sons. n Robert Durrie Barton , 91, a retired USIA Foreign Service officer, died peace- fully at his residence in Washington, D.C., on April 5. Mr. Barton was born in London of American parents from Chicago. On the family’s return to the United States, they took up residence in New England. He graduated from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, in 1941, and enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve shortly after Pearl Harbor. He obtained the rank of captain and fought on Iwo Jima. In 1942, Mr. Barton married Nancy Hemenway Whitten. In their wartime correspondence, the couple vowed to do what they could to prevent any future wars. Motivated by this idealism, Mr. Barton sought and was given a position in the U. S. Foreign Service in 1946. Their first post was Montevideo, where he served as assistant public affairs officer from 1948 to 1952. In 1953, he was posted by the U.S. Information Agency to Argentina’s second-largest city, Rosario. There he oversaw two binational cultural centers encompassing seven provinces. In 1957, Mr. Barton resigned from USIA and took a position as director of inter-American affairs for the Institute of International Education in New York City. For the next four years he criss-crossed Latin America, helping to expand the number and quality of foreign students invited to study in the United States. His office also administered the State Depart- ment’s Fulbright programs in Latin America. In addition, he was involved in founding the Council on Higher Educa- tion in the American Republics. In 1961, Columbia University invited Mr. Barton to be its director for East Campus development—namely, building the School of Foreign Affairs. He also served as deputy director of the Interna- tional Fellows Program, which recruited USAID FSO Killed in Afghanistan