Remarks at the Memorial Ceremony for Special Agent Edward J. Seitz

(2:00 p.m. EST)

SECRETARY POWELL: We have gathered together as one State Department family to celebrate the life and honor the service of Special Agent Edward J. Seitz. We have come to express our gratitude for Ed’s time among us and to offer our consolation to his adored wife Joyce, his parents Butch and Alba Seitz to whom he was so devoted, and his brother Billy, who are with us here today with other family members. This is a time of sadness, but it is also a time of joy for a life well-lived.

We want you, Ed’s loved ones, to know how deeply Ed was respected and liked, not only by his colleagues in the Diplomatic Security Service and here at headquarters, but also by the men and women with whom he served in our field offices across the United States and at our posts overseas.

And it is a high tribute to Ed that among his greatest admirers are the many Foreign Service Nationals he came to know at our embassies. Ed was legendary for extending a hand to these foreign employees of our missions and making them feel valued, letting them know that they, too, are part of our State Department family. Indeed, Ed was a beloved figure to all, from our Ambassadors to the local hires who work in the motor pools. All around the world, Ed Seitz touched lives with his warmth and kindness, and his friends from across the globe join all of us here today in sending their deep condolences to the Seitz family.

This good, gregarious, generous man made lasting friends of everybody he encountered. While many in this room had the privilege of being befriended by Ed, many others of us who honor him today did not. If he could have, Ed eventually would have befriended us all, because that’s the kind of guy he was. One day, this "hale fellow well met" with a huge grin under his Fedora would have burst into our lives, asking what he could do for us. He’d have bought us a cup o’joe or stood us a round of Jameson’s, or brought us a pizza with all the trimmings and refused to let us pay. Anyone who wasn’t a friend of Ed’s just hadn’t met him yet. It was only a matter of time – time which, tragically, Ed was not given.

In the course of our day, we who work here in the State Department pass by the Memorial Plaques that grace the Lobby. The plaques bear the names of our State Department colleagues who have given their lives in the line of duty, in the service of their country. The names date all the way back to the earliest years of our nation. During our country’s first two centuries, we lost people due to tragic accident and disease. Today, we tend to lose our colleagues to acts of political murder and terrorism.

As a veteran Special Agent of our Diplomatic Security Service, Ed Seitz was acutely aware of that sobering trend. Ed knew how dangerous a mission of service to our nation can be. Ed served on the Joint Terrorism Task Force. He developed one of the first leads in the investigation of the September 11, 2001 attacks. And as a member of our response team, Ed donned a biohazard suit and descended into the wreckage of our embassy in Nairobi shortly after the 1998 bombing. Now, Ed’s name will join the names of the men and women we lost in that Nairobi attack, and of the others who came after them.

Ed would be proud to be numbered among those who served and sacrificed. Yet, like each of his fallen colleagues whose lives were cut short, Ed would have greatly preferred to have remained among us, doing the work he so passionately cared about, surrounded by his friends, sustained by his wonderful family, pursuing the dreams he shared with his best friend and the love of his life, Joyce. Ed did not choose to leave the people he loved so soon.

2004/1362