The Foreign Service Journal, October 2022

48 OCTOBER 2022 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Middle East, including five ambassadorial appointments, from the 1950s through the 1990s. Some have a closer and more personal connection with Ann. They know how she raised their four sons, Mark, Caldwell, Scott, and George, in difficult and often dangerous environments. They know how unfailingly kind and welcoming a hostess she was, and how impressively she dealt with her gradual but inexorable loss of vision, start- ing in her forties, over a long and produc- tive Foreign Service career, with never a word of complaint and in a manner that left many unaware. Loss of vision did not lead her to abandon the piano and her years of lessons; instead, she memorized and played quite a repertoire of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and Schumann. When I was a teenager, the daughter of an FSO, I recall “babysitting” for two Harrop boys when our parents lived on the same street in Brussels in the early 1960s. But then, as happens in the Foreign Ser- vice, I did not reconnect with the Harrop family until decades later in Washington, by which time the two boys had become four and the grandchildren six. Many also know and appreciate Ann Delavan Harrop through the Nelson B. Delavan Foundation. Her grants to Foreign Service organizations over many decades supported numerous initiatives aimed at preserving, presenting, and sharing the legacy of the U.S. Foreign Service and American diplomacy. In 1993, after Ann and Bill retired from active duty, they continued their “partnership in service” to the Foreign Service by applying their combined diplomatic experience, knowl- edge, and perspectives to the thoughtful selection of recipients of Nelson B. Delavan family foundation grants. This small nonprofit trust, established that year by Ann’s mother in honor of her father after the manufacturing company he founded was sold, provided a means to contribute to causes that Ann and Bill agreed were worthy. Through the Delavan Foundation, they made generous annual contribu- tions to the American Foreign Service Association, the American Academy of Diplomacy, DACOR, the Senior Living Foundation, the Association for Diplo- matic Studies and Training, the online publication American Diplomacy (www. AmericanDiplomacy.org), and the National Museum of American Diplo- macy. The Delavan Foundation became a well-known and respected patron and force multiplier for the Foreign Service as a professional diplomatic service and as an institution, making a real difference. Among grant recipients have been AFSA’s history book, The Voice of the Foreign Service , and its 75th anniversary dinner celebration; two annual AFSA awards—the Nelson B. Delavan Award for an office management specialist and the Tex Harris Award for constructive The family teams up to demonstrate a time-lapse golf swing in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, during the 1960s. Ann and Bill Harrop in Kenya in the 1980s. COURTESYOFBILLHARROP COURTESYOFBILLHARROP