Alvin P. Adams Jr. | U.S. ambassador, 73

Alvin P. Adams Jr., a career diplomat who served as U.S. ambassador to Haiti during the tumultuous period in the early 1990s when Jean-Bertrand Aristide became president in a historic democratic election, only to be overthrown months later in a military coup, died Oct. 10 in Portland, Ore. He was 73.

The cause was an apparent heart attack, his cousin Timothy Phelps said.

Mr. Adams spent three decades in the Foreign Service, beginning in 1967. His first overseas posting was in Vietnam during the war in Southeast Asia.

He rose through the diplomatic ranks and in 1983 received his first ambassadorial appointment, to Djibouti, an impoverished and troubled country in the Horn of Africa. Mr. Adams served there until 1985, then became deputy director for counterterrorism at the State Department before arriving in Haiti in 1989. - Washington Post