As printed in the November 2022 Foreign Service Journal.

James Coit Whitlock Jr., 82, a retired Foreign Service officer, died peacefully on June 8, 2022. 

Born in 1939 in Johnson City, Tenn., Mr. Whitlock was raised in Maxton, B.C. Upon graduating from Duke University in 1961, he joined the U.S. Foreign Service as a political officer. He served in Uganda, where he met his equally adventurous wife, Carol; India; the Dominican Republic; Denmark; Germany, where he served as consul general in Hamburg during the fall of the Berlin Wall; and, finally, South Korea.   During this period, he also earned a law degree from The George Washington University. He retired in 2000. 

With boundless intellectual energy, Mr. Whitlock mastered seven languages. He turned his penchant for writing extensive vocabulary lists into a Chinese– Korean dictionary, Chinese Characters: A Radical Approach (Ilchokak, 2003), wrote a generational chronicle for his children, and more. Prior to his final posting in South Korea, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, but that did not hold him back. 

Remembered by friends and family as a diplomat in the truest sense of the word, he loved bringing people together to help them overcome their differences. And he firmly believed that the best way to do so was through a good party. His “wine hunts,” where hundreds of guests would descend on an unsuspecting volunteer’s estate to search for hidden wine bottles, were the stuff of legend.

Above all, he was a caring, kind man, supportive of his family, principled in his integrity, generous of spirit, and with a mischievous sense of humor to boot. Mr. Whitlock is survived by his wife, Carol, of Chevy Chase, Md.; his three children, Charlie of Boston, Mass., Joe of Falls Church, Va., and Happy of Winchester, Calif., and their spouses; and three grandchildren.  

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