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Nevada native home from Afghanistan
The American eagles engraved into the stone entrances around Sam Foursha's historic Nevada home tell you a lot about him.
So does the delight in his eyes when he talks about all the places he has been and what he did there.
Foursha is a matter-of-fact man who tends not to glamorize his work as a U.S. State Department official in Iraq and Afghanistan.
His colorful background also includes his years as a star athlete at Nevada High School, pole vaulter at the University of Missouri and Naval officer who began as a deep sea diver, reached the rank of captain and served as a military liaison to help Romania, Macedonia and Poland transition from communism in the early 1990s.
Foursha (pronounced Four-shay) is highly patriotic, which you see at the entrances of his and his wife Cindy's home at 527 S. Cedar St., whose original occupant was Missouri Gov. and U.S. Sen. Joel Stone (1848-1918).
"I grew up watching John Wayne movies, so joining the military came naturally," said Foursha, 61. "Being a Missouri boy from a small town who'd never seen the ocean, the Navy seemed pretty interesting.
"I liked the camaraderie. You spend a lot of time with people on ships and build strong relationships. You don't see that so much in the civilian world. I felt like what I was doing was worthwhile."
Foursha played quarterback on the Tigers' undefeated conference champion football team in 1966 and reached a personal best of 15 feet pole vaulting at Mizzou while earning a Naval commission on an ROTC scholarship.
His late parents were Bus, a Bendix Corp. X-ray technician, and Laura Foursha. His older brother Larry is deceased. Foursha and his wife, the former Cindy Weil, have a son, Andy, a Navy lieutenant working in weapons development in St. Louis who briefly saw his dad in Afghanistan last year, and Leslie, a health care student at Missouri.
Foursha served on the USS Blue Ridge cruiser during Vietnam and "dove almost every system the Navy had from scuba to hardhat dives for submarine rescues, equipment salvage and underwater research and explosives," he said.
Having met legendary divers Carl Brashear and Blacky Villasenor, he became a special operations officer and gained the experience in Eastern Europe that qualified him to join the State Department in 2006.
Foursha arrived in the Anbar Province of Iraq as a provincial reconstruction team leader for education, health care, infrastructure building, rule of law and economic development -- a field he had worked in for the city of Nevada for five years.
"Anbar was a hugely dangerous place," he said. "I was at a small base outside Ramadi and anytime I walked outside my trailer, there was gunfire in one direction or another, even at 3 a.m.
"I was shot at with small arms and lots of rockets. I was protected by a concrete blast wall when four mortar rounds hit within 30 feet of my living compound in the Babil Province in 2008.
"Some people think Al Qaeda and the Taliban are stupid because they look ragtag. But for the type of war they're fighting, they are very effective. When you've got people willing to kill themselves to make a point, you can't always guard against that.
"You've got to understand you're on the pointy end of the stick."
Foursha left Iraq in mid-2009 and went to Afghanistan in February last year to be embedded in Gov. Tooryali Wesa's compound as Wesa's senior advisor in Kandahar City.
Every excursion outside had to be carefully planned because the enemy was always ready to strike, he said.
Deputy Gov. Abdul Latif Ashna was killed on his way to work by a bomb-toting motorcycle rider just before Foursha came home to Nevada Jan. 29.
"Gov. Mamoon Sami Rashid in Anbar survived 20 assassination attempts," Foursha said. "They never got him. We have more educated and experienced folks in Iraq, which Afghanistan really lacks. There's a lot more to happen in Iraq, but the Shi'ites and Sunnis will eventually work it out. They have a future with the oil resources if they're willing to look beyond the disagreements.
"That's a far-off hope in Afghanistan. They call it 'The Graveyard of Empires,' going back to Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, the British and Russians. There was a period of chaos when the Russians left and the Taliban stepped in because the people wanted some sort of law and order."
Foursha, whose name is French Canadian, was quickly accepted by Canadian troops in Kandahar who thought he was one of them, he said, chuckling.
A fitness enthusiast who works out six days a week, he ran the quarter mile around Wesa's garden.
He had recent arthroscopic surgery on both knees and in 2009 had surgery for herniated discs suffered when he slipped on hydraulic fluid and fell inside a helicopter.
Foursha doesn't know how many nations he's visited, but his favorite destinations are London, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan and Romania.
Richard Carpenter, a teammate on the 1966 football team, said the man's patriotism is deep but not dogmatic.
"Some people go way overboard with their patriotism, but Sam does his as a way of life," Carpenter said.
"It wouldn't matter if he sat down with a Tea Partier or a hippie from the good old days. He's fairly moderate in his social outlook. Some people are constantly upset, but that's not Sam. He is usually trying to work on things that he can work on. He always checked on veterans at the senior center when he was with the city."
Carpenter said others on the championship team were Steve Ogle, Rod Loomer, Tim Wysong, John Denman and the late Randy Fellows, Doug Pettibon, Jim Olson and Larry Householder.
Foursha might return to Afghanistan for a private company, but will eschew another full year's assignment with the government. He wants to reprise the role he had before Iraq as an honorary consul for Romania, promoting economic development, and plans a bicycle trip on the 240-mile Katy Trail from Clinton to St. Louis.
He does 150 pullups, 250 pushups and 250 dips a day on parallel bars and will resume running three to five miles a day to prepare for a triathlon. "I want to try running 25 miles across the Bonneville Salt Flats outside Salt Lake City," he said.
"The salt is compressed like white sand. It's interesting territory -- very surreal."