Obituaries - November 2024
Yaroslav “Yaro” Bihun, a 25-year employee of the U.S. Information Agency, died August 30, 2024, at age 81. An Army veteran, Bihun began his USIA career in 1969 at the Ukrainian language service of VOA. In 1979 he transferred to the Agency’s Press and Publication Service, working as a writer-editor on the Wireless File’s Africa branch. Bihun later served as press attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv in the early years of Ukrainian independence after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Retiring in 1994, he remained active with a variety of Ukrainian-American organizations such as the Ukrainian Association for American Studies and the Washington Group Cultural Fund, which showcases Ukrainian culture in Washington DC. As a writer for such publications as Svoboda and The Ukrainian Weekly, Bihun also documented decades of political and cultural news affecting Ukraine and the Ukrainian diaspora.Reginald Joseph Contee, Sr., died October 14, 2024, at age 82. A native of Washington, DC, Contee served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam war era before beginning a 27-year career at USIA. His service at the Agency included work in the communications and records branch of its Administrative Services Division in the 1970s. Contee later served as a physical security specialist in USIA’s Office of Security.
Ed Scherr, a longtime writer for the USIA Wireless File, died August 6, 2024, at his home in Potomac, MD, at age 90. A native of Washington, DC, he earned a B.A. in journalism from the University of Maryland following his two years of military service as an Army cryptographer in Garmisch, Germany. Scherr worked for a short while as a reporter for the Washington Star newspaper, where his colleagues included Carl Bernstein, before starting a decades-long career at USIA. He worked for both the East Asian and European branches of the Wireless File. After receiving a Master's degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Scherr joined the File’s political desk as a diplomatic correspondent, covering terrorism, human rights, and narcotics. His speed in producing the roundup of the daily State Department press briefing earned him the admiration of his colleagues and the nickname Fast Eddie. Scherr was a longtime member of PDCA and its predecessor organizations, and for many years wrote the obituaries for their quarterly print newsletters. See the Remembrance of Ed by Alan Kotok at https://publicdiplomacy.org/ed_scherr_an_appreciation.php.
Karen Starkey, age 76, died September 5, 2024, at Peace Healthcare at Lions Center in her hometown of Cumberland, MD. Starkey’s decades-long career at USIA and State included work on the acquisitions staff of the Agency’s Office of Exhibits in the mid-1970s. She later served as chief of the administrative support division in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
Compiled by Member News Editor Domenick DiPasquale. Contact him at editor@publicdiplomacy.org.