Remembering Frank W. Brecher MIA ’58

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SIPA remembers Frank W. Brecher MIA ’58, a retired Foreign Service officer who died on April 21, 2020, at the age of 88 due to complications from COVID-19. Born and bred in New York City, Brecher joined the Navy after high school and served from 1951 to 1954. Following his discharge, he earned a BA at City College and an MIA at what was then known as Columbia’s School of International Affairs.

Brecher was a Foreign Service office with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), serving from 1961 to 1983. He specialized in economic development. His postings included Nigeria, Bolivia, and Morocco, for which he gained fluency in both French and Spanish. He also served as an economic specialist at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations on two separate occasions, serving under ambassadors including Adlai Stevenson, Andrew Young, and Jeanne Kirkpatrick.

Brecher attended Princeton University from 1967 to 1968 on a midcareer fellowship. In 1974 he received the State Department’s Meritorious Honor Award.

After retiring from the Foreign Service, Brecher embarked on a second career as a historian. He had developed a keen respect for historians who combined the practice of diplomacy with the skills of a scholar, and sought to apply his diplomatic knowledge and expertise in a number of scholarly works.

In addition to a trilogy of books analyzing early French-American relations, Brecher wrote Reluctant Ally: Foreign Policy toward the Jews from Wilson to Roosevelt (1991). He maintained a special interest in John Jay’s contribution to diplomacy and American independence, and later authored Securing American Independence: John Jay and the French Alliance (2003), lecturing on this seminal figure in American diplomacy.

Brecher also contributed articles to a number of periodicals and scholarly journals. Among these was a profile of the first American ambassador to Israel, James G. McDonald, published in the Foreign Service Journal in September 2010.

Brecher led a full and active life in retirement. He played tennis several times a week until his late 70s. He was dedicated to retaining his French proficiency, reading French newspapers online each day and re-reading the complete oeuvre of Proust. The windows of his 28th floor apartment faced the East River, and he enjoyed seeing vessels sail up the waterway – a reminder of his Navy days.

Brecher is survived by his brother, two sisters, and two nieces and three nephews, as well as many friends and admirers.

Thanks to Dan Brecher for providing this material. Thank also to Foreign Service Journal, from which the final version was adapted in part.