Saturday, March 25, 2006

Thomas L. BurnsNSA Cryptologist

Thomas Lawrence Burns, 87, a retired National Security Agency cryptologist who then wrote a history of the intelligence agency's origins, died March 15 at Suburban Hospital. He had acute respiratory distress syndrome.

During World War II, Mr. Burns served at Arlington Hall Station with the Army Signal Security Agency, which helped break German and Japanese codes and was a precursor to the NSA.

After he retired, he was asked to return and write the definitive history of the NSA's origins. That was later declassified and published as "The Quest for Cryptologic Centralization and the Establishment of NSA: 1940-1952."

He was a native of Albion, N.Y., and a 1941 history graduate of Canisius College in Buffalo. He received a master's degree in personnel management from George Washington University in 1958.

He was a member of St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Silver Spring, where he lived.

His wife, Sara Ruth Hammond Burns, whom he married in 1951, died in 1997. A son, James Burns, died in 2003.

Survivors include three children, Mary Ebrahimpour of Baltimore, Susan Strand of Falls Church and Margaret Pudvah of New York; a sister; and 13 grandchildren.

Kenneth E. Boles, 77, a film and television producer who made documentaries for the U.S. Information Agency, died Feb. 28 of complications of lung cancer at Holy Cross Hospital. He had lived in Laurel for 40 years.

Mr. Boles was born in Clinton, Ind., and served in the Navy during the Korean War. He then embarked on a career as a television news producer for CBS and other news organizations in Florida, Tennessee, Alabama and New York. He moved to the Washington area in the late 1950s.

At USIA, Mr. Boles produced documentaries about life in the United States for distribution overseas. During his career, he traveled widely throughout the United States and to more than 60 countries. He retired in 1987.

His marriage to Genie Boles ended in divorce.

Survivors include his wife of 19 years, Gay Boles of Laurel; a daughter from his first marriage, Deborah Ruby of Welcome; three stepchildren, Susan Sullivan of Bethesda, Randal Brown of Ellicott City and Steven Brown of Mount Airy; and eight grandchildren.

Loraine B. McGee, 90, a homemaker, correspondent and Senate wife for 18 years, died of a heart attack March 21 at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda. She lived in Bethesda.

Mrs. McGee was an unofficial but constant adviser to her husband, Sen. Gale W. McGee (D-Wyo.). She kept a comprehensive list of all the Wyoming people they had met, organized by town, in a little black book. As they drove into a town during their visits back to the state, she would read the list aloud to refresh her husband's memory, her son said.

For several years in the 1960s, she wrote a monthly column for Wyoming newspapers, "A Line From Loraine," which reported her observations from Washington.

She was born in Pierson, Iowa, and graduated from Nebraska State Teachers College in 1936. She moved with her new husband, a college professor, to the University of Colorado, the University of Chicago and Notre Dame before settling at the University of Wyoming. In 1957, she helped lead a group of college students visiting the Soviet Union, a highly unusual trip at the time.

After her husband's 1977 electoral defeat, he became ambassador to the Organization of American States and the couple enjoyed extensive world travel.

Her husband died in 1992. A son, David W. McGee, died in 2001.

Survivors include three children, Robert M. McGee of Chevy Chase, Mary Gale Clark of Monkton, Md., and Lori Ann Stagnaro of Annapolis; and 10 grandchildren.