Bob Pastor’s life was a combination of intellectualism and adventurism, which, to his son looked, a lot like the exploits of a certain fictional crusader.
“For me, he was an Indiana Jones,” Robert Kiplin “Kip” Pastor said of his father. “We’d be playing basketball or we’d be on the way to a baseball game together and then he’d be in China observing elections. And then you’d hear he was in Haiti on a mission with Colin Powell, Sam Nunn and President (Jimmy) Carter. And as they were trying to come to an accord, Marines were there and he’s rushing to finish it all, while running through the city and riots are breaking out.”
They wasn’t just stories for the Pastor family. That was Bob Pastor’s life. A Newark, N.J. native who lived in Atlanta in the 1980s and 90s, he was a key foreign policy aide for Carter for more than 20 years. Pastor also authored 17 books and taught at Emory, Harvard and American universities, all the while seeking ways to solve some of the world’s problems.
“If you asked him what he did professionally, he’d say he was a professor,” said his son, who lives in Los Angeles. “But he really was a teacher and scholar who had great influence on public policy.”
Robert Alan Pastor of Washington, D.C., died Wednesday at his home of complications from colon cancer. He was 66. A memorial service is planned for Jan. 25 in Washington. Rapp Funeral and Cremation Services, Silver Spring, Md., is in charge of arrangements.
In the mid-1970s, with a newly minted Ph.D. from Harvard, Pastor was named the executive director of the Commission on U.S./Latin American Relations. Before his 30th birthday, he was working in the White House as director of Latin American and Caribbean Affairs on the National Security Council.
“He helped to reshape our country’s relations with our Latin American neighbors and secure democracy and human rights throughout the region,” Carter said in a prepared statement. “After he left the White House, he continued this work at the Carter Center, leading for more than a decade critical peace and election observation missions and advancing the idea of a united North American community.
“Because of his vision, boundless energy and political skill, the Western Hemisphere is more democratic and developed today.”
During the Carter presidency, Pastor helped negotiate the Panama Canal treaties, among other accomplishments. After leaving the White House, he performed tasks like organizing a trip for the former president and a team to observe elections in Panama. It was no easy feat, Pastor told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 1998. While negotiating the terms of Carter’s visit, he said former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega jumped onto a table and started throwing things at him.
“He was a master strategist and he always thought big,” said Jennifer McCoy, director of the Carter Center’s Americas Program and political science professor at Georgia State University. “He also loved to rock the boat and push people to their limits”
Friend and colleague Joe Eldridge said Pastor “was happiest when he was working on policy, when he was trying to bring things into reality, when he was trying to make things happen.
“Bob was an enterprising, able activist who could spit out an idea a minute,” said Eldridge, who is the chaplain at American University. “He was always thinking outside of the box and ahead of the curve. He was always trying to anticipate what was going to happen and set up a dynamic that would lead to the implementation of his idea. He was not content simply to just write. He wanted to put his ideas into action.”
In addition to his son, Pastor is survived by his wife, Margaret “Margy” Pastor of Washington; daughter Tiffin Pastor Eisenberg of New York, N.Y.; brothers Donald Pastor of Minneapolis, Minn., and Bruce Pastor of Boston, Mass.; and one grandson.
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