U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, was from Piedmont, California
Christopher Stevens, 52, the U.S. Ambassador to Libya who was killed Tuesday night in an RPG attack on the U.S. Consulate in Bengazi, was a natural diplomat who spent his youth in Piedmont, his undergraduate years at UC Berkeley, and attended the Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. Stevens was the son of retired Marin Symphony cellist, Mary Commanday, and the stepson of Robert Commanday, the founder of San Francisco Classical Voice magazine and former music critic for The Chronicle.
A series of quotes in the SFGate.com article paint the image of an intelligent man who was genuinely interested in people and never lost the human touch.
“Chris was one of those people who was very inclusive of everyone,” said Amy Moorhead, whose older brother was a close friend of Stevens’ in high school and college. “He was a people person. He was genuinely interested in me, even though I was younger. But it was not just me – he was genuinely interested in everybody.
“If he met someone, he wanted to know about them,” Moorhead said.
“He was so intelligent, but never lost the human touch,” <Harry> Johnson <a neighbor during Stevens’ boyhood> said. “He could make anyone feel comfortable and make them a part of his world because he fit into theirs.”
“He had been to all these glamorous places, and we wanted to hear about them and he always wanted to talk about things like, ‘How’s your son doing?’ ” said Paul Feist, a childhood friend and former editor at The Chronicle who asked Stevens to be best man at his wedding 25 years ago.
Emily Gottreich, vice chair of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at UC Berkeley, said, “He had the kind of local knowledge that ambassadors don’t always have. He spoke Arabic, he was deeply engaged in the process of creating a new and better Libya, and he’s exactly the kind of person you don’t want to lose. It’s just a tragedy.”
Stevens spent two years in Morocco with the Peace Corps teaching English before returning to California to attend law school. He spend a few years as an international trade attorney and then decided to enter the Foreign Service.
Stevens spent over two decades as an envoy to Middle Eastern countries, including Egypt, Syria, and Israel. After Libyan rebels launched their revolution agains Moammar Gadhafi, Stevens served as the U.S. special representative to the insurrectionists.
-Bill at
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