Robert C. Frasure – United States Ambassador

Special Envoy To Bosnia

August 22, 1995:

Robert C. Frasure, the special envoy to Bosnia who was killed last weekend, received a tearful eulogy from his 16-year-old daughter on Tuesday along with an admiring tribute from Secretary of State Warren Christopher. “I took him for granted. … I never told him I loved him,” said Sarah Frasure in a heart-wrenching farewell to her father. “Now I will never wake again to hear him making pancakes on a Sunday morning.” Never again would he take her fishing, or out for driving lessons, she told a hushed chapel in a halting voice. “One question I will always ask myself is, ‘Why,”‘ she said, speaking before Frasure's flag-draped coffin at a military chapel near Arlington National Cemetery. “I know I will never have the answer to my questions.”

Frasure was one of three American diplomats killed on Saturday when their vehicle plunged off a treacherous mountain road into a ravine in Bosnia. They were on their way to peace talks in Sarajevo. President Clinton was flying back from his Wyoming vacation on Wednesday to attend a 1 p.m. memorial service for the three. Christopher describe Frasure as “a remarkable American diplomat who took risks and found the ways to go forward.” He vowed to keep up pressure for the elusive Bosnian peace the career diplomat was seeking at the time of his death. “I promise we'll keep working on it until we bring all the cows home,” Christopher said in funeral services at Fort Myer, Virginia.

Christopher said one of the qualities of Frasure, 53, was his drive “to persevere until a solution is found.” He and other speakers at the funeral praised Frasure as warm and good humored, straight-talking and willing to take risks. “When there was a tough or messy job, Bob would get it,” said John Kelley, former US ambassador to Finland and a close family friend.

Frasure was a decorated foreign service officer with a 21-year career that had taken him to overseas posts in Switzerland, Germany, Britain, Nigeria, Ethiopia and, most recently, Estonia, where he was US ambassador. He had lived in Falls Church, Virginia, a Washington suburb. His widow, Katherine, and their daughters — Sarah and 15-year-old Virginia — sat in the front row.

The Rev John W. Yates, of the Falls Church Episcopal Church, who delivered the sermon, said Frasure would have wanted his work on behalf of peace to continue. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be the children of God,” he said, quoting scriptures.

Wednesday's memorial service, to be held at Fort Myer, will also honor Joseph J. Kruzel, 50, deputy assistant secretary of defense for European and NATO affairs, and Air Force Colonel Samuel Nelson Drew, 47, a National Security Council aide.

December 15, 1995 (UPI) -President Clinton awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal postumously to three US diplomats killed in August in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Air Force Col Nelson Drew, Ambassador Robert Frasure and Joseph Kruzel were killed when their military vehicle plummeted down a mountainside cliff while on a diplomatic mission in Bosnia.

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