The Foreign Service Journal, November 2021

100 NOVEMBER 2021 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL him from pursuing higher education, he enrolled in night classes at Temple University, studying accounting and Spanish while working as a census enumerator for the city of Philadelphia. In 1956 the YMCA invited Mr. Young to be a U.S. delegate to an international conference in Beirut, and the experience proved transformative. He later described it as “that moment that I said I have got to do something in the international sphere.” After graduating magna cum laude from Temple in 1966, he passed the Foreign Service exam, becoming one of just a handful of Black professionals to enter the diplomatic corps. Mr. Young began his career in 1967 as a budget and fiscal officer in Mada- gascar. He was subsequently assigned to Conakry, Guinea and Nairobi as a supervisory general services officer. In 1974 he was transferred to Doha as an administrative officer to provide sup- port to the newly expanded embassy and the first U.S. ambassador to Qatar, who appointed him to the role of chargé d’affaires until 1977. He went on to serve in Barbados, Amman and The Hague. In 1989 Mr. Young was named ambassador to Sierra Leone, where he helped coordinate humanitarian assis- tance during the civil war and refugee crisis in neighboring Liberia. From 1994 to 1997, he served as ambassador to Togo. Upon his return, he was promoted to Career Minister and named ambassa- dor to Bahrain (1997-2001), making him the only Black ambassador in the Near East and one of the few outside Africa. In his final diplomatic assignment, he was ambassador to Slovenia (2001-2004), where he helped guide the country’s progress toward NATO membership. Soon after, Mr. Young retired from the Office of the Inspector General, having attained the rank of Career Ambassa- dor in recognition of his distinguished service over four decades. He is survived by his wife of 54 years, the former Angelena V. Clark; two children, David Young of Washington and Michelle Young of Brooklyn; and a grandson. Read more about Ambassador Young’s remarkable life in the October FSJ Appreciation. n George S. Vest III , 102, a retired Foreign Service officer, died of circulatory ailments at his home in Bethesda, Md., on Aug. 24. Mr. Vest was born on Dec. 25, 1918, in Columbia, Va. He graduated from Epis- copal High School in Alexandria, then received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia in 1941. Although he seldom spoke of the experience, Mr. Vest served as an Army officer in Italy during World War II. After the war, he used the G.I. Bill to obtain a master’s degree in history from the University of Virginia in 1947, and joined the Foreign Service the same year. After serving in Bermuda and Ecuador, Mr. Vest was assigned to the Dominican Republic. He later recalled spending a chunk of his savings on warmweather attire, only to receive a transfer to Ottawa, which ranks among the coldest capitals in the world. In 1959 he turned down the opportunity to serve as consul in Florence and opted to go to Paris instead as a political adviser to Air Force Gen. Lauris Norstand, then the supreme allied commander in Europe.This experience ledMr. Vest to focus the rest of his career on ColdWar diplomacy. He went on to several assignments with NATO, including a term from1961 to 1963 as the first American to be the top adviser to the NATO secretary general. He moved to Brussels in 1967 as one of the top U.S. diplomats to the European Commission, and in 1973 he was chosen as lead negotiator in talks for the Confer- ence on Security and Cooperation in Europe, or the Helsinki conference, which ratified the postwar boundaries of the continent and established new standards for human rights in the Soviet Union and the rest of Eastern Europe. Mr. Vest served as Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s top adviser on political and military affairs and was subsequently tapped to be assistant secretary of state for European affairs in 1977. He then served as ambassador to the European Union from 1981 to 1985. His final assignment was as director general of the Foreign Service; he retired in 1989. In his later years, Mr. Vest remained a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, worked as a consultant to the Akin Gump law firm in Washington and volunteered as a reading tutor in the D.C. schools. He also served on the vestry of St. Alban’s Episcopal Church and worked in its thrift store. Mr. Vest is preceded in death by his wife of 68 years, the former Emily Clemons, who died in 2015, and their daughter, Jennie Vest, who died in 2014. He is survived by two sons, George S. Vest IV of Fairfax, Va., and Henry Vest of Broomfield, Colo., and two granddaugh- ters. (See the Appreciation on page 81. ) n If you would like us to include an obituary in In Memory, please send text to journal@ afsa.org. Be sure to include the date, place and cause of death, as well as details of the individual’s Foreign Service career. Please place the name of the AFSA member to be memorialized in the subject line of your email.