Farewell To My Beloved Father Ambassador Ayalew Mandefro
My father passed away August 2, 2019, quickly, quietly, and without suffering — just the way that he always prayed. My brother, my mother and I were with him and we have since begun the work of grieving.
Below is a summary of my father’s story and a video link to the eulogy I gave at his memorial service. Thank you to the outpouring of love that my family and I have received from everyone who loved him. May his legacy live in all those he touched.
Ambassador Ayalew’s Life Story
Ambassador Ayalew Mandefro was born on June 4, 1935 in Harar, Ethiopia. He attended Ras Mekonnen elementary school and Wingate secondary school in Addis Ababa. He went on to attend Tufts University on an academic scholarship, dual majoring in Electrical Engineering and International Relations/Government. Upon graduating college, he was so anxious to return to Ethiopia to serve that he skipped out on graduation and had his diploma mailed to him.
In 1958, he began his career as a foreign services officer staffed at the American Desk at the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry. He worked as an assistant to Minister Lij Michael Imiru and subsequently Minister Ketema Yifru. There was a deep rift on the African continent at that time between the Casablanca and the Monrovia groups. So, with Minister Ketema Yifru, they campaigned throughout Africa to gain buy-in for the formation of then Organization for African Unity, what is the present-day African Union (AU). He would go on to be instrumental in the diplomacy efforts to secure Addis Ababa as the home for the AU and in coordinating the drafting of the charter for the AU. In 1965, Ambassador Ayalew Mandefro became State Minister of Foreign Affairs and eventually Deputy Minister of the American Desk.
In 1971, he was appointed as Ambassador to Somalia by His Majesty Haile Selassie. He worked tirelessly to better the relationship with President Siad Barre’s government and that of Ethiopia. In order to do so, Ambassador Ayalew repeatedly advised his Majesty to visit Somalia and he finally did. The fact that the two leaders talked to each other was considered a diplomatic achievement that softened the stance of the two respective countries with each other. Ambassador Ayalew worked very hard to diffuse the tensions between Somalia and Ethiopia and he is credited with bringing back the two countries from the brink of war on his watch.
During his tenure as Ambassador in Somalia, he traveled back and forth between Hararge, Ethiopia and Mogadishu, Somalia a great deal. During this time, he visited the soldiers in Ethiopia and provided important military intelligence about Somalia’s capabilities and the steps that Ethiopia could take to defend its borders. An Ambassador had never spent so much time with soldiers and this endeared him to Ethiopia’s military.
With the military’s request, he was subsequently appointed as Ethiopia’s first civilian Minister of Defense under the Derg, after serving as Ambassador in Somalia for five years. When he realized Somalia’s President Siad Barre was preparing to go to war with Ethiopia, he did everything he could to strengthen Ethiopia’s military position and secure support from allies.
While Minister of Defense, he married the love of his life, Tsedale Kebede, and soon had two children, Dr. Mehret Ayalew Mandefro and Musse Ayalew Mandefro.
In 1977, after serving as Minister for two and a half years, he was appointed as Ambassador to the United States during President Carter’s administration after a 30-month break in the diplomatic ties between the U.S. and Ethiopia. With the Cold War underway, factions within the Derg regime that preferred to distance themselves from the Americans were not pleased that Ambassador Ayalew was being sent and orchestrated an assassination attempt on his life that miraculously failed and is still talked about today.
In his first year as Ambassador to the United States, it quickly became apparent that Ambassador Ayalew’s views on Ethiopia’s future and the Derg’s could not be reconciled. He eventually resigned and started a new life for himself and his family in the United States.
He began a second career as an entrepreneur and remade himself. He was President and Owner of Mehret Inc. which provided consulting services to Emerson Electric Company’s Government and Space Division and to a host of other companies interested in developing new business prospects in Africa in the area of aerospace technology and agro-industry products. After a decade of consulting, he became Vice President for Comsat, opening new markets for satellite earth stations in North, West, and Southern African regions. In Cote d’Ivoire he secured the single largest contract in Comsat’s history for satellite-based TV and radio broadcasting systems. He ended his career as Vice President of Sales and Marketing at NetCom Solutions International when he retired.
On May 22, 2011, he gave his daughter, Dr. Mehret Ayalew Mandefro, away to Mr. Zeresenay Berhane Mehari, in a beautiful wedding ceremony held at the Hilton Hotel in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He eventually became the grandfather of Lukas, Menna, and Gabriella. He had a very close loving relationship with all three of his grandchildren.
Ambassador Ayalew had a brilliance that dazzled and he was a guiding star in the Diasporic community in the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area. He helped start or advised countless civic associations and was a founding member of Debre Genet Medhanealem Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Church in Temple Hills, Maryland and The Africa Society in Washington, DC.
He passed away, August 2, 2019, after a brief illness at Fairfax Hospital surrounded by his wife and children.
He is survived by his wife, Tsedale Mandefro, and his two children, Dr. Mehret Mandefro and Musse Mandefro. His memorial service was held Thursday, August 8, 2019 at Debre Genet Medahanealem Church in Temple Hills, Maryland and his funeral was held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, August 10, 2019 at Selassie Church.
Eulogy
I want to begin by thanking Gash Musse for sharing his life story at the service and Gash Hailu for helping write it on such short notice.
It was truly overwhelming to be forced to contend with summarizing our father’s life. I had always begged him to write a book. And when he refused, I started to record him and gather his archives. So I have a really personal sense of the depth of his work.
Many people knew our father because he lived a very public life that involved service to his country, which was honestly his first love — and for the record that was okay by his family. He never tired of thinking about Ethiopia, worrying about her, or talking about her as most of you know.
But what I want to talk to you about today, is his private life. The one that only myself, my mother, and my brother really knew. My father lived such an exemplary life in all the ways that a father could. He was a steady presence that taught through his actions and his words. He had a gift for words — both written and oratory. And he used that gift in a very specific way when it came to his kids.
As long as either one of us can remember, he never once talked to us like children. He talked to us like adults. Applying reason, and logic to everything. Though we didn’t realize it at the time, he was giving us a gift. The gift of understanding the power that lay in what I call primary experiences. Honoring the lesson that you have to use your mind and exercise it. Instead of doing what others tell you… to think about things for yourself. And he demonstrated what he meant — often. Our father had an opinion on absolutely everything. He had either read about it and formulated an opinion or asked enough questions to do so. You could never get anything by him without a question.
His mind was so alive. It is perhaps the thing that we will miss most. He was our beloved interlocuter. You could literally talk, and often argue, about anything with him.
I’d like to think that Musse and I both have taken a bit of that. I think by default, he has raised us in a way that makes it very difficult for us to shy away from the truth. To look at life, with all of its hardships and face it, head on — bare. That makes both of us truth-tellers, calling it like it is.
I stand before you with a shaved head, not only because I am mourning but also because it is literally the hair style my father liked best on me. I think that says a lot about who he was as a person. When I shaved my hair off two decades ago and went on my own personal quest to figure life out, my father’s response was — “why didn’t you cut your hair off sooner. You should always wear your hair this way Mehret.” I venture to say that is a rather atypical response. But I think it was his way of saying there are more important things to focus on. Like who you are on the inside.
I remember when I was 8 years old, and Musse was 7, he feared we were going to lose our identity in America. These kids needs to know Africa he told my mother. So he took us to Senegal to remind us of the continent we came from. This is Africa he said… the seed he planted grew in both of us. He helped us have an unshakeable sense of who we are.
As a mother of three young kids, I think a lot about what a parent can do for a child to strengthen their inner self against all that the world will throw at them. What I know now, is that my father was a force field protecting us from all harm. Providing shelter and never wavering in his duties. It’s very easy to take all of that for granted. But it is not lost on us and I would be remiss to fail to acknowledge perhaps his greatest contribution which was the love and care he provided for his family. And I don’t mean just me, mom and Musse.
My father was a towering presence of love and care in our family as a whole and in the community at large. Though he is survived by two children, and his wife… he raised another seven. I had countless cousins who grew up in my house alongside my brother and I. And beyond those that were living with us, there were countless others who called 6512 Montrose St. there home away from home. Ours was a house you could drop your kids off at, go to work, and you knew they would be fed and cared for. And the thing about all of this — that is remarkable — is that my mother and father never made a big deal about it. They just did it. It was a part of who they both were.
This brings me to my last point which is the great convening power our father had. He brought people together. I have literally lost count of the number of civic associations he either helped start or advised. In some ways, I think that is perhaps what he did best. He loved to organize and get people working on something that was larger then themselves. I think that is why this church community was so important to him. Medhanealem was a bedrock for my father and it is fitting that we send him off here. I am grateful for the community that this church has provided for decades and the support and care you have provided to my family in this hard time. I know how much he meant to so many of you. But please find comfort that the end of his life came just the way he had always prayed, quickly, with dignity, and with no suffering.
I am grateful, that myself, my brother and my queen mother were all there for his final hours. I am grateful to my brother for saying exactly the right words when Dad could last hear them, I am grateful for the wife he had in my mother who slept every night at the hospital and the example that their love has provided for everyone in my family. And I am perhaps the most grateful that he met his three grandchildren and had such a close relationship to him. To Lukas who has his hair, his lips and smile; to Menna who has his strong spirit, and to Gabriella, who at the tender age of three, is exhibiting his inquisitive mind.
And though are hearts are broken I do not doubt he is in a better place. May his spirit soar and may he rest in perfect peace.
Thank you.
