The Foreign Service Journal, December 2018

94 DECEMBER 2018 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL the Public Members Association evaluat- ing Foreign Service officer performance records. In 1972 Mrs. Robinson married Hamilton “Robby” Robinson. She earned a degree in accounting from the Uni- versity of Maryland, and then served as bookkeeper for her husband’s business. They enjoyed traveling, ballroom danc- ing, church activities, investment clubs, Rotary and spending time with friends. The couple gathered their large family together for special events and enjoyed several sailing trips together on clip- per ships, an experience Mrs. Robinson shared twice with her children and their families after Mr. Robinson’s death. Mrs. Robinson moved to the Clemson Downs Retirement Center in 2007 to be near family. She is survived by four children: Joanne Hoyt Young (and her spouse, Dave); Pamela Hoyt Schmutz (and her spouse, Jim); James Warren Hoyt (and his spouse, Amalin); Henry Augustus Hoyt (and his spouse, Janice); a stepdaughter, Maryethel Miller; and 13 grandchildren: Brian, Timmy, Cathy, Chris, Jonathan, Caro- lyn, Jeremy, Jimmy, Jonathan, Michael, Jackie, Alex and Nathan; and 13 great- grandchildren. Mrs. Robinson was predeceased by her parents and her sister Charlotte Ole- weiler and brother Walter (Bud) Lownes. n C. Richard Zenger , 94, a retired Foreign Service officer, passed away in Portland, Ore., on May 22. Born in Portland, Ore., on March 11, 1924, Mr. Zenger was raised by his mother, Nell Springer Zenger, a physical education teacher. He attended Boise Elementary School and Jefferson High School, where he was elected student body president and made many lifelong friends. In December 1941, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Mr. Zenger enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps and served in the Pacific theater as a radioman with the First Armored Amphibian Battalion. After the war, he married Edna Joyce Whitney, his high school sweetheart, and they started their family. When the Korean conflict erupted, Mr. Zenger was called back to active duty. He survived the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir, which took place in the dead of winter, and which he called “the worst experience of my life.” One day, as a forward spotter for an artillery company, Mr. Zenger had been one of the first to observe a fog bank that turned out to be the breath of thousands of Chinese soldiers advancing on his company’s position. Mr. Zenger graduated from the School of Architecture at the University of Oregon, which he attended on the GI Bill. He practiced architecture in Oregon City before joining the U.S. Foreign Service in 1957. For the next 24 years he devoted his career to pioneering self-help and low-cost housing programs, developing savings and loan programs to support home ownership and providing utilities to established informal housing settlements. With his family, he lived and worked in Nicaragua, Ecuador, Argentina, Panama, Ethiopia, Washington, D.C., and Tunisia. In 1967 he was awarded a sab- batical to participate in a Harvard-M.I.T. Joint Center for Urban Studies seminar. When Mr. Zenger retired from the Foreign Service in 1981, he and his wife celebrated their love of travel by embark- ing on a yearlong trip that started in Tunis, then wandered around the Medi- terranean and eastward across Asia. Car- rying only a small canvas bag each, and eschewing air travel, the couple moved from place to place by train, bus, boat, pickup truck and on foot. By the time they arrived back in Port- land, they had spent time in 15 countries (documented in Dick’s journal), eaten an amazing array of food (detailed in Edna’s letters) and challenged each other to 365 games of Scrabble. Mr. Zenger was ahead by one game. The couple settled in Portland but continued to travel internationally for his consulting work with regional housing offices. They explored Oregon and the Pacific Northwest as hikers and birders, and spent many weeks each winter at Cannon Beach. While in his seventies, Mr. Zenger hiked the Oregon Coast solo from Astoria to the California border. His desire to know more about his ancestry also took him to Falchern, Switzerland, the tiny alpine village where his grandfa- ther had been born. Family members note that in the last years of his life, the loving and constant care of Mary-Ann Zenger was integral to Mr. Zenger’s well-being. Mr. Zenger is survived by his wife, Edna, his partner for the past 72 years; daughters Rebecca, Robin, Amy and Mary Ann; daughter-in-law Gabrielle Francis-Zenger; sons-in-law Stephen Link and Jack Williams; and grandchil- dren Matthew and Ian Loveless, and Beatrix and Isobel Zenger. He was preceded in death by his son, John Whitney Zenger, and his son-in-law, Stephen Loveless. 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.