Obituaries

While serving as an imagery analyst at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, Col. Base helped identify missile launch sites in Cuba from photographs taken by U-2 reconnaissance aircraft.

Col. Base later served in Saigon during the Vietnam War as chief of an imagery analysis section. His other assignments took him to the Defense Intelligence Agency and then Shaw Air Base in South Carolina, where he managed a specialized unit that analyzed multispectral imagery for information on terrain, weather, mapping and navigation.

He retired from active military duty in 1978 and settled in Fairfax Station, where he worked as a systems analysis and business development consultant with defense contractors.

He moved to Hilton Head, S.C., in 1987 and to Lansdowne in Loudoun County in 2000.

Col. Base was a native of Chicago. He graduated from Albion (Mich.) College in 1952 and Officer Candidate School in 1954.

His military decorations include the Legion of Merit.

Survivors include his wife of 52 years, Barbara Ann Base of Lansdowne; two sons, David Robert Base of Potomac Falls and Thomas Michael Base of Silver Spring; a brother; and two grandsons.

Jerome Russell MacBethMuseum Director, Realty Agent

Jerome Russell MacBeth, 72, an art museum director-turned real estate agent, died of cancer July 11 at the Washington Home.

Mr. MacBeth was born near Hyattsville and raised in the Woodridge section of Washington. He graduated from old McKinley High School and served in the Army in Germany from 1953 to 1955.

He graduated with a degree in art history from Catholic University in 1957 and for the next three years worked as a program analyst in the comptroller's office at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Seeking to further his academic studies, Mr. MacBeth did graduate work in art history at the University of Florence in Italy in the early 1960s. He traveled extensively throughout Italy and Europe, studying Renaissance art and broadening his command of European languages, which in addition to Italian and Latin included French, German, Spanish and Greek.

In 1965, he became assistant director of the Cummer Gallery of Art in Jacksonville, Fla. He went on to work as director of the Cheekwood Fine Arts Center in Cheekwood, Tenn., and director of the Gibbes Art Gallery in Charleston, S.C.