The Foreign Service Journal, November 2022

80 NOVEMBER 2022 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL dinner parties to participating in embassy social functions such as plays and ladies’ groups, bridge games, and her daughter’s Brownie troop. While she attempted learning Serbian, German, and Hungarian, second languages did not come easily to her; but her home was always open to international guests. In 1972 the Scerbacks retired to the St. Petersburg, Fla., area, where Ms. Scerback continued to enjoy her pas- sion, bridge, as well as golf and social life around the community. The couple relocated to Columbia, Md., in 2002 to be near their daughter. After her husband died in 2005, Ms. Scerback continued an active, indepen- dent life of bridge, friends, and travel until 2015, when she relocated to the Bethany Beach, Del., area where her daughter had moved. Since May 2020, she had been living with her daughter and son-in-law, Den- nis. She enjoyed going for walks, reading novels, biographies, and the newspaper, and watching the evening news. She kept up with professional tennis and golf and was an avid fan of the Baltimore Ravens and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Ms. Scerback is survived by her daughter, four grandchildren, four great-grandchildren, and several nieces and nephews. She will be laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery with her husband. n Thomas Tonkin, 86, a retired For- eign Service officer, passed away after a short illness on Aug. 17, 2022, in Sarasota, Fla. Mr. Tonkin was born in 1935 in Chi- cago and earned a bachelor’s degree in history and political science from North- western University. He joined the Foreign Service in 1959 and was posted to Rio de Janeiro. In 1962 he was transferred to Washington, D.C., and worked for the State Department’s Secretariat/Policy Planning Staff. In 1963, he was detailed to study Latin American affairs at Stanford Univer- sity and was subsequently assigned to Panama City as a political officer from 1965 to 1968. Mr. Tonkin served in the same capacity in Buenos Aires from 1968 to 1972, followed by two years as chief of Argentine affairs in Washington. At this point, he took early retirement from the Foreign Service and went to work for the DuPont company in São Paulo and then Wilmington, Del., from 1974 to 1985. He then rejoined the Foreign Service in 1985, and was posted to Caracas as labor attaché for three years. From 1988 to 1990, he served as politi- cal counselor in Guatemala before serv- ing as deputy chief of mission in Dublin, where he remained until 1992. He then returned to Caracas as political counselor from 1993 to 1996. His final posting was a two-year stint as political counselor at the U.S. mission to the Organization of American States, after which he retired with his wife, Peg Tams, also a retired Foreign Service officer, to Sarasota, Fla. They lived there happily for 24 years. When asked how he would charac- terize his life in the Foreign Service, Mr. Tonkin said, with his characteristic wry humor: “I had a great time mostly; some- times not so much.” An avid reader, he volunteered with the Literacy Council, the Sarasota Library, and the All Faiths Food Bank during retire- ment. He and his wife continued to travel extensively, enjoying vacations, trans- Atlantic cruises, and other trips while his wife did consular work as a reemployed annuitant in Italy, Colombia, Brazil, Mexico, Ecuador, and India. In his final months, Mr. Tonkin particularly enjoyed corresponding with many of his Foreign Service friends. He is survived by his wife, Peg; his daughter, Vanessa Tonkin; and his son, Tom Tonkin. n James Coit Whitlock Jr., 82, a retired Foreign Service officer, died peacefully on June 8, 2022. Born in 1939 in Johnson City, Tenn., Mr. Whitlock was raised in Maxton, B.C. Upon graduating from Duke University in 1961, he joined the U.S. Foreign Service as a political officer. He served in Uganda, where he met his equally adventurous wife, Carol; India; the Dominican Republic; Den- mark; Germany, where he served as consul general in Hamburg during the fall of the Berlin Wall; and, finally, South Korea. During this period, he also earned a law degree fromThe George Washington University. He retired in 2000. With boundless intellectual energy, Mr. Whitlock mastered seven languages. He turned his penchant for writing extensive vocabulary lists into a Chinese– Korean dictionary, Chinese Characters: A Radical Approach (Ilchokak, 2003), wrote a generational chronicle for his children, and more. Prior to his final posting in South Korea, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, but that did not hold him back. Remembered by friends and family as a diplomat in the truest sense of the word, he loved bringing people together to help them overcome their differences. And he firmly believed that the best way to do so was through a good party. His “wine hunts,” where hundreds of guests would descend on an unsuspecting vol- unteer’s estate to search for hidden wine bottles, were the stuff of legend.