Honoring Fallen Colleagues During my 14 years on the AFSA Governing Board, I have worked with other AFSA officers and staff to maintain and expand the AFSA Memorial Plaques that grace the walls and columns of the State Department’s diplomatic entrance. The 12 plaques currently honor 321 colleagues who died in circumstances distinctive to overseas service since the founding of the republic. In 2001, when I was AFSA president, the Governing Board restored—after a half-century in abeyance— the original plaque criteria honoring colleagues who died in the line of duty such as in vehicular crashes during official travel. That resulted in the inscription of 29 names of State Department or USAID colleagues who died between 1959 and 2000. In 2021, as AFSA retiree vice president, I coordinated adding the names of 67 consuls and diplomats dating back to 1794 whose deaths in circumstances qualifying for inscription were recently discovered by researchers mining online databases. That same year, to preserve the remaining plaque space to honor future deaths, I led the creation of the Virtual AFSA Memorial Plaque to commemorate any additional fallen colleagues from past decades and centuries whose names are belatedly discovered. As of today, five have been so honored. While I felt great pride in helping to get those 101 colleagues properly honored, I never looked forward to the occasional difficult conversations with friends and family members of colleagues who died in circumstances that did not qualify for inscription. To be sure, all deaths are tragic—especially those of colleagues serving our country far from home. But there are practical, philosophical, and legal reasons why not all overseas deaths can be commemorated on AFSA’s polished stone plaques. The practical reason is that there is insufficient space in the C Street lobby to display the names of the more than 1,000 early consuls and diplomats and post-1923 Foreign Service members who died overseas. The philosophical reason is the desire to focus visitors to the plaques on the distinctive dangers of life and work in the Foreign Service such as terrorism. To do so requires excluding deaths due to natural causes and in other circumstances not directly attributable to carrying out official duties in the location of assignment. The legal reason is that the 1933 Joint Resolution of Congress authorizing the placement of the AFSA plaque on government property made it clear that the people whose names were inscribed were to have died in circumstances distinctive to overseas service. Thus, were AFSA to begin inscribing all deaths, it could prompt a challenge to AFSA’s authority to continue updating the plaques. I have often explained this to people inquiring about plaque criteria, because AFSA presidents in the last six years have forwarded inquiries to me for initial review based on my institutional knowledge of plaque history and criteria. Previously, that role was filled by longtime members of AFSA’s Awards and Plaques Committee. For many decades, this committee comprised mostly active-duty and retired AFSA members, many with years of experience adjudicating plaque nominations. For example, in 2016 the committee had two Governing Board members and seven regular AFSA members. But in 2017, AFSA replaced all the previous committee members with five Governing Board members. Since then, with some exceptions including myself, most committee members have served only during their single two-year Governing Board term. They inevitably arrive with no knowledge of the plaque criteria or the case histories of how the criteria have been applied over the past 91 years. This loss of institutional knowledge was compounded earlier this year by the departure of the AFSA staff member who had advised the committee for five years. With my eight years’ service as retiree VP ending next summer, my departing advice to the new board taking office in July 2025 will be to resume appointing at least some regular AFSA members to the Awards and Plaques Committee—seeking volunteers who anticipate being able to serve for six or more years. Rebuilding institutional knowledge on this committee would safeguard AFSA’s ability to correctly and consistently apply plaque criteria to properly honor our colleagues dying in circumstances distinctive to overseas service. n The 12 plaques currently honor 321 colleagues who died in circumstances distinctive to overseas service since the founding of the republic. Contact: naland@afsa.org RETIREE VP VOICE | BY JOHN K. NALAND AFSA NEWS 66 NOVEMBER 2024 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL
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