Richard T. Dunning

Richard True Dunning was among 31 passengers and nine crew members who were killed in the crash of Pan-Am Flight 151 in Liberia.

The Lockheed Constellation aircraft was en route from Johannesburg, South Africa, to New York, with planned stopovers in Kinshasa, Accra, Monrovia, Dakar, Lisbon and the Azores.

According to news reports, the aircraft departed Accra, in present-day Ghana, on the evening of June 21. The aircraft planned to stop at Roberts Field, Liberia, and radioed at 2:45 A.M. that it intended to land in 30 minutes. It was not heard from again. Following a massive multinational air search, the wreckage was found the next day on a 1,000-foot mountain near the village of Sanoyie.

Dunning had served in the U.S. Army in World War II. After his discharge, he joined the U.S. Department of State and was a diplomatic courier based at the U.S. Embassy in Paris.

Born in Dallas, Texas, he grew up in Glendale, California, where his mother lived. At the time of Dunning’s death, his father was working in Paris with the Economic Cooperation Administration, the agency that oversaw the postwar Marshall Plan and was the precursor to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

The Diplomatic Security Memorial honors 137 employees, contractors, military personnel,
and host-nation security personnel who lost their lives in service to diplomatic security.

For more information, visit www.dsmemorial.state.gov