Virtual AFSA Memorial Plaque

In 2021, AFSA expanded its Memorial Plaques in the Department of State’s C Street Lobby to add 67 new names of early diplomats and consuls going back to 1794 who researchers had identified as having died under circumstances qualifying for plaque inscription. Anticipating that researchers would continue to discover additional qualifying deaths from past decades, the AFSA Governing Board voted that any additional historical names would be memorialized here on this Virtual AFSA Memorial Plaque to preserve the limited space on the physical plaques to inscribe the names of colleagues who die serving our nation abroad in future decades. As anticipated, additional discoveries of long ago deaths continued, with eight names now on this virtual plaque.

The Governing Board in 2025 adopted the policy to consider inscribing the virtual names on a physical plaque in the future if that number reaches 26 -- enough to fill one of the three currently blank physical plaques – if relatively few contemporary deaths have occurred by then and substantial open space remains.

Click on a name to read more about an honoree.

Osmon E. Henryson
Plane Crash – Suriname 1943

 
§

Jeannette LaFrance
Carbon Monoxide Poisoning – Cairo 1954

 
§

Thomas McGrail
Airplane Crash – Pacific Ocean 1957

 
§

John J. Meily
Plane Crash – Brazil 1944

 
§

Francis P. Corrigan, Jr.
Airplane Crash – Laos 1961

 
§

William H. Lewis
Cerebral Malaria – Ghana 1963

 
§

John A. Nuhn
Vehicle Accident – Thailand 1964

 
§

Wayne A. Wilcox
Airplane Crash – France 1974