The Foreign Service Journal, December 2006

moved to Washington, D.C., in 1952. As an FSO, Mr. Sampas served in Bangkok, Paris, Ottawa, Brussels and Reykjavik, in addition to Washington. He retired from the Foreign Service in 1980, but continued to serve the Department of State on a part-time basis until 1990. In addition to work- ing on Freedom of Information Act requests in the department, he assist- ed the culture and press section of Embassy Beijing, especially during the Tiananmen Square crisis. Married to Dorothy Myers Sam- pas, also a career Foreign Service officer, on retirement Mr. Sampas accompanied her to her posting in Beijing, to the U.S. mission to the United Nations in New York and to Mauritania, where Mrs. Sampas ser- ved as ambassador. There, he assisted youngsters in reading at the American International School of Nouackchott. In retirement he also served on the Department of State’s Board of Appellate Review and on the town council of Somerset, Md. Mr. Sampas was a member of Chevy Chase Presbyterian Church. He was also a member of the District of Columbia Bar, the American Foreign Service Association and Diplomatic and Consular Officers, Retired, and served as an assistant Boy Scout master. Survivors, in addition to his wife, include two children: Lawrence Sam- pas of Washington, D.C., and George Sampas of New York City. He is also survived by a brother, John G. Sampas of Lowell, Mass., and two sisters, Claire Paicopolis of Woburn, Mass., and Helen Surprenant of Cracut, Mass., as well as many nieces and nephews. Judith Ann Thurman , 62, spouse of the late FSO Richard Thurman, died of lung cancer in Boulder, Colo., on Sept. 26. Mrs. Thurman was born on April 22, 1944, in Newport News, Va., the daughter of Joseph and Thelma Basham. She attended Oklahoma City University, and in 1965 married Richard Thurman. The couple set- tled in Nashville, Tenn., where Mrs. Thurman worked as a reporter for the Nashville Tennessean. After her husband joined the Foreign Service, she accompanied him on postings in Chile, Turkey, Cyprus, Mexico and Brazil, along with several Washing- ton-area assignments. Following Mr. Thurman’s death in 1997, Mrs. Thurman moved to Santa Barbara, Calif., and then Boulder, Colo., to be near her daughter Diana. She is survived by her two children, Diana of Louisville, Colo., and Alex of Brooklyn, N.Y., and two grandchildren. Donald A. Wetherbee , 79, a retired Foreign Service officer, died on Aug. 8 at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, Md., after a brief ill- ness. Mr. Wetherbee was born in New York City, and graduated from Ford- ham Preparatory School. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1945 to 1955, including stints in China, Korea, Paraguay and Chile. In Korea his responsibilities included the Pusan Perimeter, Inchon Landing and Chosin Reservoir. He was wounded in the line of duty, and was awarded the Bronze Star Medal and the Purple Heart. In Paraguay and Chile, he was assigned to marine security detachments. Mr. Wetherbee entered the For- eign Service in 1955, and was assigned to Santiago as a communica- tions clerk. In 1958, he was trans- ferred to Vientiane as a general ser- vices officer. Two years later, he received orders to proceed to Elisabethville (now Lubumbashi) to serve as an administrative officer. He was transferred to Marseille in 1963, and sent to Paris as a GSO in 1965. He was posted to Algiers in 1967, and transferred to London in 1970, where he was commissioned in 1972. In 1973, he was assigned to the Bureau of East Asian Affairs at State, where he was post management officer for Japan and China. He later served at the fledgling U.S. Liaison Office in Beijing. Mr. Wetherbee received the State Department Meritorious Honor Award in 1978, and retired from the Foreign Service that same year. He settled in Washington, D.C., later moving to Silver Spring in 2005. He was a member of the American Foreign Service Association and Dip- lomatic and Consular Officers, Retired. Mr. Wetherbee’s first wife, Mickey Joan Wetherbee, a Foreign Service secretary, died in 1990; his second wife, Josephine “Jo” Wetherbee, whom he married in 1992, died in 2005. He is survived by a sister-in- law, Althea Wetherbee of Huntington Station, N.Y.; a niece, Jule Nelson of Mequon, Wis.; nephews Lawrence Wetherbee of Centerport, N.Y., James Wetherbee of Seabrook, Texas, and Daniel Wetherbee of Sherman Oaks, Calif.; and several cousins, grandnieces and grandnephews. D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 6 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 83 I N M E M O R Y Send your “In Memory” submission to: Foreign Service Journal Attn: Susan Maitra, 2101 E Street NW, Washington DC 20037, or e-mail it to FSJedit@afsa.org, or fax it to (202) 338-8244. No photos, please.