Obituary

Anne Jeanne Gurvin, 75, USIA officer

Anne Jeanne Gurvin, a retired USIA Senior Foreign Service officer, died March 4 of complications of breast cancer at Asbury Methodist Village’s Wilson Health Care Center in Gaithersburg. She was 75.

Throughout her life, Ms. Gurvin was committed to the promotion of music, literature and theater in the U.S. and cultural exchange between the United States and countries overseas.

Ms. Gurvin was born in Rochester, Minn. As a child during the Depression, she moved with her family frequently around the Midwest — the Dakotas, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska and Minnesota — as her father worked as a civil engineer. She graduated from high school at the age of 16 and earned a bachelor’s degree with honors in English and American studies from the University of Minnesota. She taught high school for two years in Minnesota before returning to the university to obtain a master’s degree in information science and Spanish.

In 1957, she worked as a regional library administrator with the Army Special Services in France. As part of her job, she brought together leading contemporary French authors for book discussions and wrote a periodic book review column for an Army newspaper. This was a period of intense anti-Americanism and student/labor demonstrations in France. The exposure would help her in later careers to best promote the United States’ image abroad.

At the end of her fourth year in France, she enrolled in graduate courses at the University of Paris (the Sorbonne) and then at the University of Madrid studying French and Spanish literature and philosophy. In 1962, she returned to the U.S. and worked as an academician at the University of California at Berkeley.

In 1966, Ms Gurvin was appointed to the U.S. Information Agency. She approached her work as a vocation — explaining and advocating U.S. policies to foreign audiences, increasing the knowledge and understanding among foreign audiences of U.S. society and its values, and encouraging democratic principles and institutions. Her first tour with USIA was as an assistant cultural affairs officer in Uruguay during the era of the Tupamaros terrorist kidnappings and assassinations.

After this tour ended, she took a leave of absence to attend graduate school in Latin American studies at the University of Texas. The pull of work and travel overseas drew her back to USIA, this time to Argentina in 1972. This was the era when Juan Peron returned from exile to lead the country.

Her subsequent overseas tours as a cultural affairs officer took her to Sweden, the Netherlands and Peru. While in Stockholm, Ms. Gurvin had created a consortium of Swedish publishers to bring 20 major American authors to discuss their work with the public, the Swedish Academy/Nobel Prize Committee and the press. She served as treasurer of the bi-national Fulbright boards in Sweden and the Netherlands. In The Hague, she created three prestigious Fulbright chairs that served as magnets for American scholars abroad.

In Peru, she served during a period of insurgency by the Shining Path and other rebel groups and atrocities by the Peruvian military. In addition to her many duties, she served as coordinator of a $1 million program to stimulate sales of U.S. university textbooks in Peruvian bookstores.

Ms. Gurvin also spent several tours in Washington including a Pearson assignment with the Council for International Urban Liaison.

In 1994, she was promoted to the USIA Senior Foreign Service. That same year, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and was forced to curtail overseas missions to undergo surgery and treatment in the U.S. She continued to work at USIA headquarters while continuing medical treatment until her retirement.

She continued her interests and activities in retirement. Ms. Gurvin became an advocate for breast cancer research and funding. With the assistance of doctors and staff at Johns Hopkins University and the Mayo Clinic, she fought six different cancers in her last 14 years.

Friends and colleagues remarked on her continued zest for life and her upbeat worldview and spirituality. She continued to create linkages among academic, arts, government and media as well as mentoring others in their careers. She raised funds and served on task forces for innovations in higher education, the arts and the environment.

She also enjoyed opera, the dramatic arts, and travel to more than 60 countries.

Survivors include three brothers, Peter Gurvin of Bethesda, George Gurvin of Arlington and John Gurvin of Burnsville, Minn.