Joseph Melrose Jr., 'Mr. Fixit' for the State Department

Joseph H. Melrose Jr., 69, a former U.S. ambassador to Sierra Leone, who was dispatched by the State Department to trouble spots after American embassies were bombed, died Saturday, Nov. 8, of complications following a fall.

Mr. Melrose died at Lehigh Valley Hospital. He had lived in Washington, Oreland, and Collegeville.

As ambassador to Sierra Leone in 2001, he helped bring peace to the nation, which had been involved in a civil war with revolutionary forces. He assisted with the Lomé Peace Accord, and helped uncover the connection between the illicit diamond trade and armed conflict.

He also worked to establish the first certification process for diamonds, so that "blood diamonds" did not enter the retail stream. They were the subject of the 2006 thriller Blood Diamond, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Connelly, and Djimon Hounsou, which was set in Sierra Leone between 1996 and 2001. The film suggested that the diamonds mined there were sold to finance conflict, benefiting local warlords and diamond companies.

"The customer," Mr. Melrose testified before Congress, "should be able to know that the diamond he or she purchased did not get to the retail counter by increasing the suffering of fellow human beings."

During his stay there from 1998 to 2001, Mr. Melrose helped secure humanitarian aid for Sierra Leone, and to create a special court that tried those responsible for human rights violations that occurred during the civil war. The court served as a model for similar war-crimes courts in Cambodia and Lebanon.

Since retiring from the foreign service in 2002, he had been a professor of politics and international relations at Ursinus College.

In recent years he worked for the U.S. mission to the United Nations, and assisted pupils at the Model U.N.

Mr. Melrose joined the Foreign Service in 1969. He preferred trouble spots to "easy" postings, according to Ursinus.

Dubbed "Mr. Fixit" in 2012 by NBC reporter Robert Windrem, the ambassador was coordinator for the State Department's post-Sept. 11 Task Force.

Mr. Melrose headed the emergency team deployed to Nairobi, Kenya, after the U.S. embassy bombings in the late 1990s. Windrem wrote that the ambassador also aided in the reopening of the U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, after terrorist attacks there in 1983, as well as the evacuation of U.S. diplomatic personnel after an attack on the Karachi consulate in Pakistan.

In Beirut, Mr. Melrose told Windrem, the first priorities were "to make sure that the injured were being cared for, other personnel are safe, and to make sure that sensitive material and equipment are not further compromised."

Asked why he was chosen to act as a repairman, Mr. Melrose told the reporter: "It's a bit of being in the wrong places at the wrong time, enough that I became a bit of an expert."

Born in Philadelphia, Mr. Melrose earned a bachelor of arts degree from Ursinus in 1966 and a master of arts degree from Temple University in 1969.

Among the plaudits he received were the Department of State's Distinguished Honor Award, the Secretary of State's Career Achievement Award, the Presidential Distinguished Service Award, and an honorary degree in Democratic and Human Rights Studies from Hilla University in Iraq.

He was married to Mary Alexander. They divorced. She survives. He also is survived by a son, J. Andrew, and a granddaughter.

Services were Sunday, Nov. 16.