This past weekend in Milwaukee friends and relatives of my brother, Charles W. Bray, gathered to, as they put it, celebrate his life. That life had come to a somewhat early end the prior weekend, at the age of 72, after a short bout with pneumonia.

For me and the rest of the family, of course, Charlie’s passing evoked great personal sadness. He was the sort of guy — smart, interesting, funny, loving — who lit up every room through which he passed. His death was also an occasion, however, for reflecting on other things — including how little some things change.

After serving in the Army in Germany, Charlie joined the U.S. Foreign Service. After stints in Southeast Asia and Africa, he rose through the ranks in Washington, eventually becoming State Department spokesman under Richard Nixon’s first Secretary of State, William Rogers.

The issues on which he offered daily briefings will sound eerily familiar: a quagmire in Vietnam; hostilities in the Middle East; a worldwide terror network (then financed and operated by ideological fanatics in Moscow); and growing questions about the credibility of American foreign policy. As the New YorkTimes noted in its obituary, they were “tumultuous times.”

And then there were revelations that the White House had ordered wiretaps of individuals, apparently including several high-ranking State Department officials, suspected of leaking government secrets to the press. When Henry Kissinger, the National Security Adviser, who was reported to have authorized the taps, succeeded Mr. Rogers as Secretary of State, Charlie was asked by a New York Times reporter whether he would continue as State Department spokesman.

The next day Charlie was quoted as saying he would find it “distasteful” to work for a boss who wiretapped his subordinates. Not surprisingly, Kissinger soon accepted Charlie’s resignation as spokesman.

That didn’t end his career of public service. President Carter appointed him Deputy Director of the United States Information Agency. Subsequently President Reagan named him Ambassador to Senegal. But in 1988 Charlie left government to become president of the Johnson Foundation in Racine, Wi., whose mission was to convene conferences of experts to map solutions to such issues as education, the environment, and “sustainable development.”

Charlie was frankly nervous about moving to the Midwest from the world’s capital. He quickly found that not only was there life beyond the Beltway, including a wife who brought great joy to his life, but that it could be even more fulfilling than life within Washington’s political cocoon. He discovered, or rediscovered, one of the building blocks of American greatness: the idea of voluntary action, getting things done without waiting for somebody to pass a law.

Charlie helped found a number of local civic groups in the Milwaukee and Racine areas. He was founding chairman of an internship program at his alma mater, Princeton University, which matched graduates with jobs in the non-profit sector. The program spawned dozens of imitators at other colleges. And when the fabulous Wisconsin vacation retreat of the great Broadway actors Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne was in danger of being sold off to a developer, he helped organize a successful campaign to buy and restore it.

Charlie never sought personal credit. He was, as one of his eulogists, investment banker Chet Safian, observed, a rare combination of “humanity and humility.” Likewise, no family get-together was lacking in debate, sometimes heated, about the best way to address some of the world’s problems, ranging from economic inequality to global warming. Charlie never made the mistake of assuming that those who disagreed with him had ill motives.

These days the country could use a little more of that. Rest in peace, my dear, dear brother.

Mr. Bray is a freelance columnist who lives in the Detroit area.