F OCUS - American Foreign Service Association

From 1966 to 1969, he was BNC
director in Santo Domingo, where
he is remembered for creating youth
softball leagues and opening exhibit
space for struggling Dominican artists.
From there Mr. Keiderling was
posted to Asuncion as BNC director
from 1969 to 1972. There he organized
a “musical train,” which took
Paraguayan musicians into the isolated
interior of the country to perform.
Mr. Keiderling was commissioned
as an FSO in 1973. His sole Washington
tour, from 1973 to 1976, was as
USIA’s Wireless File reporter on
Capitol Hill, where he covered
Watergate and many other stories.
Posted to Quito as cultural affairs
officer from 1976 to 1980, Mr.
I N M EMORY
Keiderling covered every inch of the
country in his Volkswagen camper.
Playing the balalaika, a stringed
instrument of Russian folk origin, he
made himself beloved of artists and
musicians throughout the country.
He was then assigned to Lisbon as
CAO from 1980 to 1985, and to Rio
de Janeiro as branch public affairs
officer from 1985 to 1989. There he
continued to work with the groups he
loved: university professors and students,
intellectuals and civic leaders.
His last tour was as CAO in Bogota
from 1989 to 1992, after which he
retired and settled in Cochabamba.
Mr. Keiderling viewed retirement
as an opportunity to travel again. He
returned often to his other homes in
the various countries in which he had
served, and was determined to visit
the regions of the world he’d not yet
seen. He visited southern Africa,
Central Asia, Cuba, New Zealand and
Australia, where he became the oldest
registered backpacker at the age
of 75.
He is survived by his wife, Charo,
of Cochabamba, Bolivia, and his
three children: Kelly, an FSO now
posted to Chisinau, Casey and Keith.
Annyce Faye Hendricks Manch,
88, wife of the late FSO Martin
Manch, died on April 5 in Fort
Lauderdale, Fla.
A native of Anniston, Ala., Mrs.
Manch was employed by the Navy in
JULY-AUGUST 2008/FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL 83