John Kruzel was born on May 6, 1945 in Goldsboro, North Carolina. He graduated from the Air Force Academy and was killed in a tragic accident while working on the Balkan Peace plan on August 19, 1995. The country of Bosnia and Herzegovina remembers the sacrifice of these Diplomats with a memorial at the crash site. FROM FIND A GRAVE: United States Diplomat. He was the son of World War II fighter Ace and retired USAF Major General, John J. Kruzel. He graduated from the Air Force Academy in 1967. He served as an intelligence officer in Vietnam and as a briefing officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He also served as a member of the U.S. delegation to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks in Finland. He was appointed special assistant to Defense Secretary Harold Brown and later legislative assistant for defense and foreign policy for Senator Edward Kennedy. He left government service to teach at Duke University and Ohio State. In 1993, Kruzel took a leave of absence from Ohio State to serve as deputy assistant secretary of defense for European and NATO policy. He was the creator of Partnership for Peace, a program designed to bring the former Warsaw Pact nations closer to NATO. His expertise and diplomacy led to his becoming the Department of Defense’s special envoy to Bosnia and chief negotiator on the United States team working to end the conflict. While on their way to Sarajevo to discuss new peace plans in the Balkans, he and two other United States diplomats (Robert C. Frasure, and Samuel Nelson Drew) were killed when a rain-soaked dirt road collapsed beneath the armored personnel carrier in which they were traveling in, sending the vehicle rolling down a 500-meter slope into a ravine. President Clinton awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal posthumously to his family. A corridor at the Pentagon was named in his honor. He also had an auditorium named after him at the Marshall Center in Garmisch, Germany. A military hospital in Albania dedicated a wing in his honor. Several awards have also been named in his honor.