Alvin P. Adams Jr., born on August 29, 1941, and died October 10, 2015 of a heart attack.

Alvin was a diplomat who served as U.S. ambassador to Haiti during the tumultuous period in the early 1990s, when Jean-Bertrand Aristide became president in a historic democratic election, only to be overthrown months later in a military coup.

Alvin spent three decades in the Foreign Service, which started in 1967.

This was his first overseas posting was in Vietnam during the war in Southeast Asia.

In 1983 he received his first ambassadorial appointment, to Djibouti, which was impoverished and troubled country on the Horn of Africa.

Alvin became deputy director for counter terrorism at the State Department before arriving in Haiti in 1989.

He used a Creole phrase laden with political significance: “A loaded donkey cannot stand still.”

This became the ambassador’s nickname in Haiti, the New York Times reported as the loaded Donkey.

Alvin P. Adams Jr. passed away from a heart attack on October 10, 2015 in Portland, Ore.