A 12-year research effort ending in 2020 discovered 67 diplomats and consular officers dating back to 1794 whose deaths in circumstances distinctive to overseas service had not been noted on the AFSA Memorial Plaques in the Department of State's C Street lobby. In May 2021, AFSA unveiled new plaques displaying those historical names and providing open space to inscribe the names of future colleagues who die serving our nation abroad. Since then, additional historical deaths have been documented and more are being researched. AFSA is memorializing those earlier colleagues here on this Virtual AFSA Memorial Plaque.
Click on a name to read more about an honoree.
Osmon E. Henryson
Plane Crash – Suriname 1943
Osmon E. Henryson entered the Foreign Service in July 1942. After a brief assignment in Washington, D.C., he was traveling to serve as a clerk at Consulate General Algiers. Due to the war in Europe, the Douglas C-54 staffed by a TWA crew under contract to the Department of War flew via South America. The airplane carrying 35 people crashed in the jungle 30 miles from Paramaribo, Suriname, on January 15, 1943. All aboard died, but when the remains were returned to the United States five years later, searchers only found enough to fit in a single casket. At the time, it was the highest loss of life in U.S. aviation history. One report attributed the crash to mechanical problems. Another report noted that two other airplanes in the area around the same time observed anti-aircraft file coming from what appeared to be an enemy submarine. Mr. Henryson was born in Iowa and worked for the Works Progress Administration in Washington, D.C. prior to joining the Foreign Service. He died at age 36.
[Sources: Foreign Service Journal, March 1943, p.127. Statement by the Secretary of State, January 21, 1943, reprinted in State Department Bulletin, January 23, 1943, p.84. Lassie Family Website at http://www.lassiecomehome.info/id8.html. FBI website (two FBI agents were on the airplane)].
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Jeannette LaFrance
Carbon Monoxide Poisoning – Cairo 1954
Jeannette Lucille LaFrance was a 32-year-old Foreign Service secretary serving at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt. Originally from Nashua, New Hampshire, she served in the Woman's Army Corps (WAC) during World War II. Joining the Foreign Service in 1947, her first tours were in Warsaw and Lima. Posted to Cairo in 1952, she was found dead in her embassy-leased apartment on March 18, 1954. The cause of death was carbon monoxide poisoning from a malfunctioning gas water heater.
[Source: Nashua Telegraph newspaper, March 26, 1954, page 6].
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Thomas McGrail
Airplane Crash – Pacific Ocean 1957
Thomas McGrail was a Foreign Service officer with the U.S. Information Agency. He joined USIA in 1952 after working as a professor at the University of New Hampshire and serving in the U.S. Army between 1942 and 1947 in the Pacific theater, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. After initial USIA assignments in Tel Aviv and Tokyo he was traveling to assume duties as cultural attaché at the U.S. embassy in Rangoon, Burma (now Yangon, Myanmar). The Pan American Airways flight 7 carrying him, 35 other passengers, and 8 crew left San Francisco on November 8, 1957 headed to Honolulu but never arrived. Debris and bodies were eventually found floating in the ocean. The cause of the crash was never determined, with both sabotage and mechanical failure being possibilities. For more information, see Gregg Herken with Ken Fortenberry, "The Mystery of the Lost Clipper," Air and Space Magazine, September 2004.
[Source: Gregg Herken with Ken Fortenberry, "The Mystery of the Lost Clipper," Air and Space Magazine, September 2004 and the Honolulu Adviser newspaper, November 10, 1957, page 6]
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John J. Meily
Plane Crash – Brazil 1944
John James Meily was en route to Pernambuco (Recife), Brazil, to assume the position of Consul General when the commercial airliner that he, his wife Margaret, and 15 others were flying in crashed near San Salvador, Brazil, on September 21, 1944. There were no survivors. Mr. Miley joined the consular service in 1914 and served in Berne, Port Limon (Costa Rica), Stavanger (Norway), Leipzig, Hamburg, Zagreb, and Guadalajara. Mr. Meily was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and Carnegie Institute of Technology, and lived as a young adult in Allentown, Pennsylvania. He died at age 57.
[Sources: American Foreign Service Journal, November 1944, p.623; The (Allentown, Pennsylvania) Morning Call, September 23, 1944, page 5; The Troy (New York) Record, September 23, 1944, page 1; and Harry W. Kopp, The Voice of the Foreign Service (Foreign Service Books, 2015), pages 36-37.]
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John A. Nuhn
Vehicle Accident – Thailand 1964
John Alfred Nuhn was born in Washington, D.C. and served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Commander in the reserves after the war. He graduated from George Washington University in 1947. After working for the Department of Agriculture and the Department of the Navy, he joined a predecessor agency to USAID in 1954 as a Foreign Service Reserve Officer. After his first tour in the foreign assistance mission at U.S. Embassy Athens, he transferred to U.S. Embassy Bangkok as USAID Deputy Assistance Director for Finance. He was killed on October 23, 1964 while returning to Bangkok from inspecting a USAID project site when the government jeep he was riding in was struck by a truck. His Thai driver was also killed, and two USAID American colleagues were injured. He died at age 45, leaving a wife and eight children aged 4 to 17.
[Source: USAID employee newspaper "Front Lines," Vol. 11, No. 24, October 30, 1964]
