Tributes – Association for Diplomatic Studies & Training

United States Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern affairs Richard W. Murphy at a press conference in Beirut, Lebanon. Photograph by Nancy Wong, September 1984. — United States Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern affairs Richard W. Murphy at a press conference in Beirut, Lebanon. Photograph by Nancy Wong, September 1984 | Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

Dick Murphy Celebration of Life Remarks

By Bill Burns – March 1, 2025

“Dick Murphy’s humanity shone through in NEA, and in each of the embassies he led. He knew that taking care of your people was as important to success in American diplomacy as artful negotiations, and he created an atmosphere in which every officer was treated with dignity and respect, encouraged to perform to their maximum capability. He set high standards and expected high performance, but he was a kind and considerate man. As a young officer, I would do anything to avoid letting him down, and as I took on more senior jobs I always tried to model his decency and integrity — his humanity.”

Ambassador Frank Wisner, the Secretary of State’s Special Envoy for Kosovo Final Status Talks at the New York Foreign Press Center Briefing on “Kosovo Final Status Issues.” | Wikimedia Commons

MY FOREIGN SERVICE ROLE MODEL- AMBASSADOR FRANK WISNER

by Kenneth M Quinn

“Frank was my image of what a Foreign Service Officer should be: highly intelligent; sophisticated; extremely well educated; personally engaging; fascinated by and endlessly curious about the country and the people; genuinely interested in the individuals who worked for him; and, most importantly for me, prepared to judge you solely based on the quality of your work.”