The Foreign Service Journal, October 2012

70 OCTOBER 2012 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL He was next posted to Moscow, in time for the June 28-July 3, 1974, sum- mit meeting between President Richard Nixon and General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev. As the chief immigrant visa officer in Moscow, Mr. Fourier oversaw the issuance of several thousand immi- grant visas to Soviet political dissidents and Jewish “refuseniks” following Pres. Nixon’s success in negotiating their right to emigrate. Mr. Fourier also issued a U.S. passport to Lithuanian sailor Simas Kudirka, who, in 1970, had jumped off a Soviet vessel onto a U.S. Coast Guard boat off Martha’s Vineyard, requesting asylum, but was mistakenly returned to the Soviet ship, where he was badly beaten. This became an international incident when it was learned that Mr. Kudirka was entitled to U.S. citizenship. (A 1978 TV movie, “The Defection of Simas Kudirka,” starred Alan Arkin as Kudirka.) Mr. Fourier was sent to Vladivostok, then a closed city for foreigners, to assist at the Nov. 23-24, 1974, summit between President Gerald Ford and Brezhnev, which eventually led to the Helsinki Accords on human rights. His last posting was as U.S. consul general in Warsaw from 1979 to 1980. Mr. Fourier resigned from the Foreign Service in 1984, while serving at the Passport Office in New York. Settling in Manhattan, he became a landlord, helped raise his two sons and was known for wearing a Stetson cowboy hat and cowboy boots. In 2000, he purchased property overlooking the Pacific Ocean near Montezuma, Costa Rica, where he resided during his retire- ment years, making many Costa Rican friends. Part of his ashes were scattered in gardens he had built on this property, and part will be kept in the family vault in Oregon. Mr. Fourier is survived by his son, Jason, of Toluca Lake, Calif., and by a brother, Jan, of McMinnville, Ore. His marriages to Beverly Banas, who accompanied him overseas, and to Olga Chmukh ended in divorce. Another son, Eric, died in 2008 in a motorcycle accident. n Herbert Gordon , 93, a retired Foreign Service officer, died on May 19 at Meadow Ridge in Redding, Conn., from coronary artery disease. Mr. Gordon was born on Aug. 13, 1918, in New York City, where his father was a tailor. He attended City College New York before joining the Army in 1941. He served in France and Bel- gium and then with the Civil Affairs unit in Germany from 1944 to 1945. On his return from the Army, Mr. Gordon worked for TWA and the Long Island Daily Press in Jamaica, N.Y. In 1947, he entered the Foreign Service. Mr. Gordon’s first posting was to Sydney, where he met his wife, Helen Watson, who was serving in Australia as an information officer for the Canadian High Commission. The couple wed in Sydney in 1948. From 1950 to 1954, Mr. Gordon served as chief of the visa section and aide to the ambassador in Athens, followed by four years as political officer in New Delhi. Here, he began what was to become a tradition of playing Santa Claus at many posts, where he enchanted embassy children in the costume made for him by a tailor in New Delhi. From 1957 to 1960, Mr. Gordon returned to the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research as assistant chief of the Near East, South Asia and Africa Division, and then as chief of the Biographic Information Division. Mr. Gordon attended the National War College from 1960 to 1961, after which he was assigned to Phnom Penh as chief political officer for two years. From 1963 to 1968, he was director of the State Department’s Secretariat Staff and then head of the Personnel Bureau’s Senior Assignments Division. Mr. Gordon returned to New Delhi in 1968 as political-economic counselor, and then became consul general in Cal- cutta. His 1969-1973 tenure encompassed the Indo-Pakistan War and subsequent Bengal refugee influx. For his leadership under conditions of unusual political and social stress, he was awarded the State Department’s Superior Honor Award in 1973. His final position was as chief of senior assignments in the department, which he held for two years. Following retirement from the Service in 1975, Mr. Gordon worked in the State Department’s declassification operation, served as an adviser to USAID on South Asian affairs, took courses at George Washington University and assisted his wife’s business, Helen Gordon Real Estate. Throughout his life, Mr. Gordon read widely and voraciously, with books and current affairs periodicals stacked high on every available surface. He took great pleasure in poring through the Washing- ton Post , doing crossword puzzles and participating in poker and play-reading groups, and he played golf and tennis well into his 80s. Attending baseball games with his grandsons brought him special joy. All who knew him relished his quick wit (he loved bad puns), steel-trap memory, and his charm and ready smile. The Gordons were longtime residents of Washington, D.C., but from 2002 to 2011 resided in Mitchellville, Md., before recently moving to Connecticut. Mr. Gordon is survived by his wife