Washington - He is special, Albert Fotaw's daughter remembers everything these decades later.
Cathy Fotaw is now 70 years old, and is a teenager older than her father. She describes a person with a big personality and a love of entertaining – as if you can’t tell this from the photos, which shows an outrageous handkerchief mustache and a preference for the Bowties sewn by his wife.
Every April 18, the anniversary of the 1983 explosion at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, claimed the life of her father and the lives of 62 people, and this continued sense of loss awakens Cathy. For several years, she wrote an email to her family and introduced them to Albert, a public housing expert at the U.S. International Development Agency.
She wrote that he is committed to public services and USDA. She was sorry, she told Albert Fotaw's grandson and great-grandson that he died at the hands of an anti-American attacker driving a truck with explosives, meaning they had never seen him.
However, Albert Fotaw's influence has been passed down from generation to generation. Forty years later, two things are clear as institutions that promote American security through international development and humanitarian work disappear:
Service to the United States Agency for International Development broke the vataw family. and the services to the United States Agency for International Development have also been redesigned.
In a sense, the requiem of now-disappeared institutions can be told through its people - including the entire family, such as the votaws. Albert's work for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and his death at work, turned to his two generations of work.
This led to his daughter Cathy dedicating part of her life to represent the family work of Americans killed by extremism.
It led to his granddaughter Anna as a contractor for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), willing to take on dangerous tasks - she was directly associated with his death.
“When my dad talked about his work, he talked about… how he was proud of the fact that he was American,” he said.
Her father's time at the USAID began in the first year of the Aid and Development Agency established by Congress and John F. Kennedy in the 1960s. Cathy and her sisters followed his initial posts in the children's careers, which took him to Ivory Coast, Tunisia, Thailand and finally Lebanon.
At the time, “You feel like you’re considered a country that tries to do the right thing, trying to help, and actually, contributes life and resources to help people overseas,” Cathy said.
After the bombing in 1983, President Ronald Reagan praised Albert and 16 other Americans for being killed.
"The best way we show love and respect for our fellow countrymen who died in Beirut this week is to continue their mission," Reagan said.
Over the years, the names of U.S. Agency for International Development and other foreign aid colleagues have been placed on the memorial wall within U.S. Agency for International Development Headquarters.
One of these names is Albert Fotaw.
After his father's death, Cathy Fotaw switched from private legal practice to federal prosecutor. She believes it pays tribute to his government services. She has also become an advocate for better treatment of federal workers and other American extremist attacks and their families.
The embassy suicide bombing destroyed her father was the first of her kind. Dota and others lobbied the State Department to step up efforts to work with their families in future attacks. They won the victory in the federal court, designating Iran to be responsible for sponsors involving militants.
Among all the greatest achievements of the attacks, including Cathy, and survivors of relatives successfully pushed Congress to build funds for them and future victims, using billions of dollars in fines paid by entities that the U.S. considers to be doing business in countries that do national terrorism.
Somehow, Albert's death in Beirut bombing gave one of his granddaughters, Anna Eisenberg, a deep feeling that since the worst has happened to her family, she won't.
After hearing about her grandfather’s life and death in public service, she began working as a contractor for the USAID almost once she left the university.
Teach communication skills to communities in the war zone and tell the story of the United States Agency for International Development, her mission takes her to Nigeria, where she introduces the orphans to her teachers to her young children. She works in Afghanistan and directs female government communications staff to speak out.
In northern Nigeria, “they are like,” are you sure you want to do that? ...You are not on the armored vehicle. Anna, 37, tells about Anna during her travels on militants’ territory. “I just felt like I could go… because nothing bad happened: ‘Yes, my grandfather got blown up – we’re fine.”
In some ways, Anna looks forward to Trump’s second term. She believes Trump was better in his first term than most presidents were promoting the work of AID at home.
It turns out that when the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) did what she did as a well-functioning independent institution, her work ended – formally terminated.
Albert was upset about Beirut's mission in a way he had never had before. Still, he reassured his family that the U.S. government knew what it was doing.
Eleven days after Albert arrived, a truck bomb exploded in the front of the U.S. Embassy. Many people, including Albert, were in the embassy cafeteria.
This year the anniversary of his death is the same as before. This year, the United States Agency for International Development itself is in ruins.
Trump and Musk's administration efficiency forces are cutting federal government personnel and programs, making U.S. International Development an early goal. They closed U.S. Agency for International Development headquarters, terminated most development and humanitarian programs abroad, and fired most employees and contractors.
A few weeks ago, at the now closed and blocked U.S. Agency for Development headquarters in Washington, a crew member proposed to those who died in Beirut, including the name of a community’s public residence expert who had a handlebar mustache and lived for his work and died for it.
The State Council said it will find permanent residence for the memorial.