— Domani Spero
We previously posted about the December 12 death of a U.S. Embassy Accra employee while visiting Cape Town, South Africa. (See US Embassy Accra Employee Falls to Death on South Africa’s Table Mountain). We subsequently learned the identity of the employee but decided not to publish his name as we could not confirm independently that the family back in California has been notified. His hometown newspaper had since identified him in a news article as William E. Callahan Jr., 53, a prominent psychiatrist in Aliso Viejo, California. He was the State Department’s Regional Psychiatrist covering West Africa. Below is an excerpt from OCRegister:
Callahan had left his private psychiatry practice in California last year to join the U.S. State Department as a Regional Medical Officer and Psychiatrist based out of the U.S. Embassy in Accra, Ghana, said Kenneth Dekleva, Director of Mental Health Services at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C.
Dekleva said the news came as a shock to him and his department last Friday when he found out Callahan’s body had been recovered by South African authorities near the Table Mountain Range.
“His death has touched many people: my phone hasn’t stopped ringing since Friday…we lost one of our own,” Dekleva said. “It’s a huge loss for our organization. He represented the best in psychiatry in my opinion. We’re very proud to have known him and to have had him as part of our team.”
Dekleva said that the investigation surrounding the circumstances of Callahan’s death is ongoing in South Africa.
Memorial services are planned in Accra on Wednesday. Services in Greenfield, Mass. and Laguna Beach will occur in early 2014, the State Department said.
Dr. Callahan joined the State Department in July 2012. Our source told us that “he was an avid outdoorsman and in great shape. He was well-liked in Accra and at the other embassies he covered in West Africa.”
According to his online bio, he was a Special Forces flight surgeon turned psychiatrist. “With the constant deployments in my military unit on clandestine missions, I observed how stress in a family member can jump from person to person and lead to physical illness as well. After 5 years of active duty and 9 of total service, I left the military to get the training to become a board certified psychiatrist.”
He was previously the president of the Orange County Psychiatric Society. For 15 years prior to joining the State Department, he provided a two hour a week, free, open-to-the-public group for families dealing with a mental illness called Interactive Solutions.
Dr. Callahan’s service in the military included a general surgery internship at David Grant Medical Center at Travis AFB, CA followed by assignment to the 8th Special Operations Squadron as a flight surgeon, at Hurlburt Field, FL. He served in both the First Gulf War and Panama Wars, and received two Meritorious Service Medals. He was the 1988 Flight Surgeon of the Year within the First Special Operations Wing.
He graduated from Deerfield Academy (1978), Tufts University (1982), Tufts Medical School (1986) and did General Surgery Internship at Travis AFB, CA (1987), and his Residency in Psychiatry at UC Irvine (1994).
R.I.P.
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