U.S. Near Eastern Affairs Diplomats
Loy W. Henderson (1922–1960) Charles W. Yost (1930-1971) William Stoltzfus (1949–1976) Joseph J. Sisco (1951–1976) Hermann Eilts (1947–1979) Andrew Killgore (1949–1980) Richard Bordeaux Parker (1949–1981) Talcott Williams Seelye (1950–1981) Alfred Atherton (1954–1984) Nicholas A. Veliotes (1955–1986) William L. Eagleton (1949–1988) Richard W. Murphy (1955–1989) Robert Pelletreau (1962–1996) Edward Djerejian (1966–1994) Hume Alexander Horan (1966–1998) Edward S. Walker, Jr. (1967–2001) Edward Gnehm (1969–2003) L. Paul Bremer (1966–1989, 2003-2004) Martin Indyk (1995–2001) Daniel C. Kurtzer (1981–2006) David Welch (1977–2008) Dennis Ross (1989–1992) John Negroponte (1962–2009) Ryan Crocker (1972–present) Barbara Bodine (1975–present) Francis J. Ricciardone, Jr. (1978–present) Zalmay Khalilzad (1984–present) William Joseph Burns (1982–present) James Steinberg (2009–present)
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William A. Stoltzfus, Jr. (born November 3, 1924) was a United States Foreign Service Officer and diplomat.

Early life [link]

Stoltzfus was born in Beirut in 1924. His father was a Mennonite from Ohio and his mother a Presbyterian from Minneapolis. Stoltzfus' father was principal of a boy's school in Aleppo, Syria, and later president of the Beirut College for Women. Stoltzfus was tutored in Aleppo before going to the American Community School in Beirut and learned to speak Arabic and French at an early age. At fifteen, he returned to the U.S. to attend Deerfield Academy and, later, Princeton University.

In 1943, Stoltzfus left Princeton to become a pilot in the United States Naval Air Corps. He returned to Princeton at the end of the war and attended the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs. After his graduation in 1949, Stoltzfus failed his first attempt at the Foreign Service exam; his childhood abroad left him without any knowledge of U.S. history.^[1]

Diplomatic career [link]

Stoltzfus' first post was in Alexandria, Egypt, where he worked as an economic officer and reported on the production of flax and other natural resources. After doing economic reporting in Benghazi, Libya, Stoltzfus was assigned to Kuwait, where he did consular work with Palestinian refugees applying for visas to the United States. He then did political reporting in Jidda, Damascus, and Aden before being assigned as Ambassador to Oman, Qatar, and Bahrain in 1972. In 1974, he would return to Kuwait, his first posting, as the new ambassador. In 1976, Stoltzfus retired from the foreign service and went into banking.^[1]

Service Chronology [link]

References [link]

External links [link]

• Interview
• Chronology of Posts