Eugene M. Schaeffer Parent

Eugene M. Schaeffer, 86, who spent more than 20 years abroad as a Foreign Service officer with the U.S. Information Agency, died August 9, 2008 at Spring Hills-Mount Vernon, an assisted living facility in southern Fairfax County, Virginia. His four children - Eric, Susan, Claire, and Michele - attended AIS in the 1970s.

Mr. Schaeffer came to Washington DC in 1953 and worked briefly for the State Department before joining USIA. His first overseas postings were to Rangoon and Mandalay, in Burma, followed by an assignment to New Delhi before returning to the United States in 1967. Later assignments included a second posting to New Delhi India and extended stints in London England; Tokyo Japan; Lagos, Nigeria; and Accra, Ghana. He retired in 1986.

His duties included managing an extensive network of USIA libraries and organizing overseas tours of U.S. cultural figures, such as Mahalia Jackson, Twyla Tharp, Pete Seeger and William F. Buckley Jr. His family noted that he tried and failed to get State Department approval for a tour of India by Creedence Clearwater Revival in the 1970s.

Mr. Schaeffer was born in Memphis and served with the Coast Guard in the Pacific theater during World War II. He graduated in 1949 from what is now Rhodes College in Memphis. After studying at Columbia University in the early 1950s, he received a master's degree in public law and government in 1968.

He was president of the Fairlington Citizens Association in the 1950s and later lived in the Mount Vernon Virginia section of Fairfax Virginia for 30 years. He was a member of Aldersgate United Methodist Church in Alexandria Virginia and served on the Fairfax library board of trustees from 1993 to 1999.

In the late 1980s, Mr. Schaeffer was an actor and production manager with the Little Theatre of Alexandria. He was a delegate to the Virginia state Democratic Party convention in the 1990s.

Survivors include his wife of 58 years, June M. Schaeffer of Fairfax County; four children, Eric Schaeffer of Takoma Park Maryland, Susan Schaeffer of Springfield Virginia, Claire Schaeffer-Duffy of Worcester, Massachusetts, and Michele Wells of Djakarta, Indonesia; and nine grandchildren.

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