Members of the Alpha Tau Omega Fraternity at UC Berkeley held a candlelight vigil last night in honor of slain U.S. Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens, who was killed Tuesday in the embassy attack in Benghazi. Stevens, who was 52 and graduated Cal in 1982, was a 21-year veteran of the foreign service, and had been a history major in college. He was also a Northern California native, having been born in Grass Valley and raised in the East Bay.

Fraternity president Derek Sayler, who obviously had never met Stevens, said Wednesday, "Although we are saddened by his death, we are proud of our brother for sacrificing his life in service to our country."

Speaking Wednesday at the White House, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, "It’s especially tragic that Chris Stevens died in Benghazi, because it is a city that he helped to save. He worked tirelessly to support this young democracy."

He served throughout the Middle East in his career, but his specialty became Libya, where he once had to prepare Condoleezza Rice for a meeting with Moammar Gadhafi, who had had a crush on her for years.

The video below, prepared shortly before he went to take his post as ambassador, just six weeks ago, shows Stevens trying to draw comparisons between slain leaders and civil conflicts in the U.S. with what recently occurred in Libya.

[NBC Bay Area]
[CNN]
[Washington Post]