The Foreign Service Journal, December 2004

dren, Jennie Chaloupkas, Kathryn Lewis, James Lewis, and Emily and Rose Consaul; and five great-grand- children, Garrett, Brent and Samantha Chaloupkas, and Hadyn and Harrison Lewis. From his second marriage, to Rita E. Fanuco of Panama, he is sur- vived by three stepsons, Enrique, Rafael and Carlos Vargas; five step- grandchildren, Ivan Enrique, Andrea, Diego Enrique, Rafael Ernesto and Gabriel Elias Vargas; and two nephews, Michael and Patrick Sullivan. Robert Albert Bauer , 93, retired FSO, anti-Nazi radio broadcaster, author and lecturer, died Sept. 27 of a stroke at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, D.C. Mr. Bauer was born in Austria. He earned an M.A. in economics and an LL.D. from Austrian univer- sities in the early 1930s, and an M.A. in Arab studies from the American University in Cairo in 1967. Mr. Bauer practiced law in Austria in the mid-1930s, but after the 1938 Anschluss, he fled his Nazi-occupied homeland and joined the Free Austria movement in Prague. After Czechoslovakia came under Nazi rule, he became editor-in-chief of the Austria Freedom radio station that began broadcasting from Normandy in 1940. After France fell in 1940, Mr. Bauer immigrated to the U.S. and worked as a broadcaster for WLWO (Overseas) radio, the overseas twin of WLW-AM radio operated by the Crosley Corporation in Cincinnati. At the time, WLWO had the most powerful shortwave transmitter in the Americas, and it is there that the format of entertainment, news and informational programming that was to become the hallmark of American overseas broadcasting at the Voice of America was developed. In February 1942, Bauer and the rest of the European staff of WLWO moved to New York and helped form what would become the VOA. It was Robert Bauer who announced to the German people, on June 6, 1944, that D-Day had begun. “The storm from the west has begun …” he announced in German from the American Broadcasting Station in Europe, based in London, where he was chief of the German radio section. Bauer continued broadcasting after the war, eventually becoming acting chief of VOA’s European division. In 1953 he joined USIA as a radio program manager. He was assigned to Tehran as a binational center director in 1958, and transferred to Paris two years later as a radio-tele- vision officer. In 1961 he returned to Washington. In 1963 he was post- ed to Cairo as a cultural affairs offi- cer, and was promoted to counselor for public affairs in 1966. He returned to USIA in 1967. He was posted to New Delhi in 1971, and retired a year later. During the 1970s, Mr. Bauer was director of the public affairs pro- gram at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and taught political science there. He then settled in Washing- ton, where he lectured on interna- tional relations at American Uni- versity and on assignment abroad for the State Department, and was a consultant at the Brookings Institu- tion. He wrote or edited a number of books, including The Austrian Solution (1982), The Threat of Inter- national Terrorism (1993) and The U.S. and World Affairs (1998). He also wrote for the West-Ost Journal. Mr. Bauer was a project director for Diplomatic and Consular Officers, Retired and a member of the American Foreign Service Association, the National Press Club and the board of trustees of the Foundation Documentary Archive of the Austrian Resistance. Survivors include his wife of 63 years, Maria Kahler Bauer of Washington; two children, Virginia Rose Ceaser and Robert F. Bauer, both of Chevy Chase, Md.; seven grandchildren; and a great-grand- daughter. Memorial contributions may be made to the DACOR Bacon House Foundation, with a view to awarding a Robert A. Bauer memor- ial scholarship. Jamroon Bucher , 68, wife of retired FSO Larry Bucher, died in Spearfish, S.D., on Sept. 2, after a two-year struggle with ovarian can- cer. From 1977 through 1995, Mrs. Bucher accompanied her husband on assignments in Islamabad, Tegucigalpa, Lahore, Vientiane, Asmara and Washington, D.C. She is survived by her husband of Spearfish, six children and 12 grand- children. Myrtle J. Eckblom , 83, retired FSO, died July 30 in Bellevue, Wash., following a long illness. Ms. Eckblom was born in Harper, Wash., to Josephine and Otto Eckblom. She graduated from West Seattle High School and business schools in Seattle and Oakland, Calif., before beginning a 20-year career in the Foreign Service. As a personnel officer, Ms. Eckblom completed tours of duty in Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Saigon, Santiago, Accra and Mexico City. Following retirement in 1974 she returned to Washington, D.C., at the request of the State Department, to D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 4 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 67 I N M E M O R Y