The Foreign Service Journal, November 2013

62 NOVEMBER 2013 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL following a battle with lung cancer. A native of New Orleans, Ms. Hovanec graduated fromMississippi State College for Women and later earned a master’s degree in public administration fromThe George Washington University. During a more than 30-year career with the U.S. Information Agency, Ms. Hovanec served in Zaire, Mexico, Serbia, Lebanon, Kenya and Croatia. She was public affairs adviser during the 1992-95 Yugoslav wars, and also served at the U.S. embassy in wartime Beirut. In Washington, Ms. Hovanec was senior advisor for press and public diplomacy in the Office of Women’s issues and in the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration. Throughout her career, she connected with women from all walks of life. She worked with Afghan women journalists who contributed to a documentary, “Afghanistan Unveiled,” an oral history that documented life under the Taliban and was nominated for a 2005 Emmy. She also helped initiate the Interna- tional Women of Courage Awards, given annually by the Secretary of State to women who, often at risk to their own lives, work to promote human rights in their countries. In 2005 she received the Secretary of State’s Award for Public Out- reach for raising the profile of the Office of International Women’s Issues and for deepening public understanding of U.S. foreign policy. A longtime resident of Washington, D.C., Ms. Hovanec retired to Oxford, and later served as an instructor in media and communications at the Washington Internship Institute. Friends and col- leagues remember her as a force to be reckoned with—a mother, stepmother, artist, teacher, diplomat and gourmand. Ms. Hovanec’s marriages to Joseph Kirkby and Vincent Hovanec ended in divorce. Survivors include two daugh- ters, Stephanie Kirkby-Cockey of Alex- andria, Va., and Leslie Caroline Kirkby of Pitman, N.J.; and four grandchildren. n Waltraudis “Traudis” Kennedy, 86, the wife of retired FSO Edwin Ken- nedy, died on July 29 at the Washington Home and Community Hospices in Washington, D.C., as the result of com- plications following an accidental fall at her home in Bethesda, Md., a month earlier. Waltraudis Maria Klepal was born in Schwerin, Germany. She was drafted into the German Luftwaffe in the final months of World War II. For four years following the war, she attended music school at the University of Rostock in East Germany, where for six months in 1950 and 1951 she was a spy for British intelligence. She later fled to West Germany, where she met her future husband, then an Air Force historian. She accompanied him to the United States after their marriage in 1956. In the early 1960s, while her hus- band was posted at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, she taught German at Huntington College in Montgomery, Ala., and at the University of Alabama. When her husband joined the U.S. Foreign Service, Mrs. Kennedy accom- panied him to posts in Frankfurt, Bonn, Damascus, Brussels, Tehran and Yaounde. A singer, she gave concerts in the European cities where he was posted. She took up painting in the late 1970s and specialized in large abstract works, which were exhibited in group shows in the Baltimore-Washington area. Survivors include her husband, Edwin P. Kennedy Jr. of Bethesda; two sons, Peter W. Kennedy of Chevy Chase, Md., and James E. Kennedy of Somer- ville, Mass.; and three grandchildren. Take AFSA With You! Change your address online, visit us at www.afsa.org/ address_change.aspx Or Send change of address to: AFSAMembership Department 2101 E Street NW Washington, DC 20037 Moving?