Friday, May 26, 2006; B07

Ronald Andrew MillianAir Force Chaplain

The Rev. Ronald Andrew Millian, 74, a retired career Air Force chaplain and colonel, died of cardiac arrest April 26 at his home in Oceanside, Calif.

Chaplain Millian was a Washington native and a graduate of Roosevelt High School. He graduated from Dickinson College in Pennsylvania and received a master of divinity degree from Boston University in 1956 and a doctor of ministry degree from San Francisco Theological Seminary in 1982. He was ordained in the Baltimore-Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church by Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam.

After graduating in 1956, he joined the Air Force and served at Homestead Air Force Base in Florida and Sembach Air Base in Germany.

Upon returning to civilian life in 1959, he founded St. Mark's United Methodist Church, later renamed Francis Asbury United Methodist Church, in Rockville. At the time, he also served as an Army Reserve chaplain with a racially integrated Reserve unit made up of doctors, lawyers and other professionals. This unit met one weekend a month at the armory near his church. On Sunday the unit marched in uniform to church, which was Chaplain Millian's way of integrating St. Mark's.

He returned to active duty in the Air Force in 1963, serving in numerous posts over his nearly 30-year career. His assignments included chaplain to the Presidential Wing at Andrews Air Force Bace, senior chaplain to NATO North in Oslo, Norway, and chief of the Chaplain Branch of the Air Force Inspector General's Office at Norton Air Force Base in California.

His last assignment was as command chaplain of the Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver. He retired in 1992 and moved to California. His military decorations included the Legion of Merit, the Meritorious Service Medal with Six Oak Leaf Clusters, the Air Force Commendation Medal and the Humanitarian Service Medal.

Survivors include his wife of nearly 50 years, Constance Millian, of Oceanside; two sons, John C. Millian of McLean and Mark A. Millian of Carlsbad, Calif.; a brother, Kenneth Y. Millian of Washington; and five grandchildren.

Lewis H. Vovakis, 72, a lawyer who provided computer support services for a number of major consumer lawsuits, established computerized publishing systems for state and local governments and was an executive with CACI International Inc., died May 21 at the Washington Home hospice. He had a brain tumor.

Mr. Vovakis, a Washington resident since 1979, most recently was a senior vice president of the Ballston-based CACI, where he directed business development for technology applications in commercial law firms. He previously was vice president and general manager for Aspen Systems in New York, as the company's revenues grew from $130,000 to $20 million.

He played a principal role in providing computerized litigation support services for the AT&T antitrust lawsuits, the asbestos suit against Johns Manville Corp., polyurethane flammability cases against Dow Chemical, the Dalkon Shield product liability lawsuits against A.H. Robins Co., a series of toxic waste cases and many others.

Other major projects that he worked on included the computerized publication of the Pennsylvania state code and the Phoenix city code.

Mr. Vovakis interviewed and screened 2,500 applicants for the 1988 presidential campaign of George H.W. Bush. After the election, he worked for the presidential transition team on high-level appointments.

He was born in Carlisle, Pa., and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. He served in the Navy as a communications officer in the mid-1950s and graduated from the Dickinson School of Law in 1958. He worked for Informatics General Corp. and Wells International. He was founder and vice president of Autocode Inc. and a member of the National Institute of Municipal Law Officers.

He was a member of the District of Columbia bar, the National Press Club and St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Washington.

Survivors include two brothers and a sister.

Joyce Sundry McFarren, 73, an administration director and consultant to the World Bank, died of a heart ailment May 20 at Washington Hospital Center. She lived in Washington.

Mrs. McFarren was born in Blairsville, Pa., and moved to Washington in 1961. She held a number of administrative positions, beginning as office manager for the Consolidated Analysis Center in Arlington from 1966 to 1973. She worked as a legal administrator with the Rockville firm of Ginsburg, Feldman and Bress from 1974 to 1982, followed by a similar position at Shulman, Rogers, Gandal, Pordy and Ecker, also in Rockville, from 1983 to 1986.

Mrs. McFarren was director of administration at the accounting firm Arthur Andersen and Co. from 1986 to 1989. She then worked as an information management consultant with the World Bank until her retirement in 2000.

She was a member of Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Washington. She was a Eucharistic minister at her church, led marriage preparation classes with her husband and helped serve meals to the needy.

Mrs. McFarren was a volunteer at Tudor Place, a historic home in Georgetown, and served as a reading tutor with the D.C. public schools. She was an officer in a women's golf group and enjoyed playing tennis. She had traveled in recent years to Antarctica, China, Tibet and New Zealand.

Survivors include her husband of 25 years, Robert D. McFarren of Washington; three stepchildren, David M. McFarren of Charles Town, W.Va., Krista Lyn McFarren of Washington and Julie M. Kerby of Berryville; two sisters; and six grandchildren.

Mary Fauntleroy Cocke Fray, 88, a longtime corporate board member and civic leader in Virginia, died of cardiopulmonary arrest May 22 at Culpeper Baptist Retirement Community, where she lived.

Mrs. Fray had served with a wide variety of civic and corporate organizations since the 1960s. From her position on the Culpeper County Welfare Board, she was appointed to the state Board of Welfare and Institutions by Gov. Albertis S. Harrison Jr.

In 1971, she became the first woman appointed to the board of Dominion Resources Inc., and she was a founding member of the National Association of Women Utility Board Members. From 1973 to 1978, she also served on the board of what was Blue Cross of Virginia.

Gov. Mills Godwin appointed her in 1977 to the board of visitors of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, a position she held for eight years. A founding director of the New Bank of Culpeper, she also became a board member for Culpeper on the Piedmont Environmental Council in the 1980s.

Mrs. Fray was born in Tallahassee and graduated from what is now Hollins University in Roanoke. Partly deaf since childhood, she worked her way through college during the Great Depression and became a social worker after graduating in 1938.

"Those girls knew they had a particular privilege to be educated at all, and the school's leaders impressed on them that they should be more than housewives" and use their education to improve the community, said one of her daughters, Robin Fray Carey of South Orange, N.J.

Her husband, Jackson L. Fray Jr., died in 1977.

Besides her daughter, survivors include three other children, Molly Fray Sanford of Syria, Va., Jackson Lee Fray III of Arlington and Preston Cocke Fray of Burbank, Calif.; and four grandsons.

Peter Benedict, 67, a career Foreign Service officer and executive with several international organizations, died of cancer May 16 at the University of North Carolina Medical Center in Chapel Hill. He lived in Raleigh, N.C.

Mr. Benedict worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development for 23 years, as leader and manager of U.S. foreign aid programs in Mauritania, Niger, Cameroon and Zimbabwe, as well as in several senior positions at the agency's Washington headquarters. He wrote and edited books and articles on economic and social development in the Middle East.

He was born in Chicago and graduated from the University of Chicago, where he also received a master's degree in 1964 in social anthropology and a doctorate in 1970 in economics and anthropology. Before he joined USAID in 1976, he supervised a number of humanitarian programs for the Ford Foundation in Iran, Iraq and the United Arab Emirates.

He retired from USAID in 1997 and then worked for Family Health International, Chemonics International and RTI International, for which he worked 16 months in Baghdad as chief of party and senior project engineer for the Iraq Local Governance Program.

He moved to North Carolina from McLean in 2004 after returning from Baghdad.

His marriage to Cordelia Dahlberg Benedict ended in divorce.

Survivors include his wife, Page Benedict of Raleigh; three children from his first marriage, Peter Alexander Benedict of Maplewood, N.J., Elisabeth B. Long of Olympia, Wash., and Timothy Benedict of Franklin Grove, Ill.; a daughter from his second marriage, Katherine Browning Benedict of Raleigh; a sister; and a granddaughter.

Helen Francis Caffrey, 80, a Fairfax County resident who volunteered with the Girl Scouts, the Literacy Council of Northern Virginia, a Republican women's group and battered women's shelters, died May 9 at Inova Alexandria Hospital. She had gastrointestinal bleeding.

Mrs. Caffrey was an Annapolis native and graduate of Annapolis High School.

Survivors include her husband of 63 years, retired Army Col. James V. Caffrey Jr. of Fairfax County; five children, James Caffrey of Richmond, Jack Caffrey of Falls Church, Amy Caffrey of Campbell, Calif., and Mary Knight and Helen McKenney, both of Fairfax County; and seven grandchildren.

William E. Neely, 93, a retired Navy captain who served as attorney general of American Samoa in the early 1950s, died May 5 of massive organ failure at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Martinsburg, W.Va. He was a resident of Shepherdstown, W.Va.

Capt. Neely was born in Weston, W.Va. He received a bachelor's degree in English in 1934 and a law degree in 1940, both from West Virginia University in Morgantown. He practiced law in Clarksburg, W.Va., before enlisting in the Navy in 1942. During World War II, he was with the Navy Armed Guard, which guarded the ships that carried some 373 million tons of cargo to and from U.S. ports.

In addition to his duty as the attorney general of American Samoa, he served as a judge adjutant general's officer. He retired in 1973.

He lived in the Washington area on several occasions between 1946 and 1976. In retirement, he traveled extensively, visiting more than 60 countries, every state in the union and every county seat in West Virginia. "He had to set foot in every courthouse," his wife said.

A boxer in college, he remained a sports fan all his life and enjoyed going to Orioles games.

His first wife, Mary Roe Neely, died in 1966.

Survivors include his wife of 38 years, Jean Chapman Neely of Shepherdstown; and a daughter from his first marriage, Elizabeth Roe Neely of Baltimore.

Ellen Wilson Prater, 69, a volunteer with several civic organizations, died May 8 at Inova Mount Vernon Hospital of multiple organ failure, following hip surgery earlier in the year.

Mrs. Prater was born in Chicago and attended Drake University in Des Moines. After moving to a number of locations with her husband, an Air Force officer, she settled in Alexandria in 1979.

She volunteered with the Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, PTA and officers' wives clubs. She was also a member of Aldersgate United Methodist Church in Alexandria.

Her husband of 48 years, Ronald F. Prater, died in 2004.

Survivors include three children, Richard E. Prater of Tucson, Beth P. Oligmueller of Greeley, Colo., and Ronald C. Prater of Alexandria; and 12 grandchildren.

Elizabeth Faye Warchal, 61, a contract specialist for two defense contractors, died May 3 of breast cancer at her home in Springfield.

Mrs. Warchal was born in New River, N.C. She moved to the Washington area in 1967 and worked for several federal agencies as a purchase agent and contract specialist.

She also worked as a contract specialist at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, as a supervisory contract specialist at Anderson Air Force Base on Guam and as a cost and price analyst at the Naval Facility Engineering Command on Guam.

She returned to the Washington area in 1989 and worked as a contract specialist for the Naval Sea Systems Command and the Department of Energy.

After retiring from federal service in 1997, she became a senior contract administrator with Springfield-based Ensco Inc., where she handled contracts in support of NASA's Kennedy Space Center and several Air Force bases. In 2000-2001, she was senior contract representative for Science Applications International Corp.

She graduated summa cum laude with a business administration degree from Strayer University in 1999.

Mrs. Warchal was a member of the Order of the Eastern Star.

Her marriage to Neil Lee Sovern ended in divorce.

Survivors include her husband of 26 years, Michael A. Warchal of Springfield; three children from her first marriage, Elizabeth Rockett of Annandale, John Sovern of Mission Viejo, Calif., and Pamela Mansfield of Phoenix; and six grandchildren.

Robert Moises Riano, 49, a senior intelligence officer with the Central Intelligence Agency, died of a heart attack May 3 while working in Iraq.

Mr. Riano, who lived in Derwood, worked for the CIA for the past 15 years in a variety of positions. He moved to the area in the late 1980s after receiving a master's degree in business administration from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., where he had obtained a bachelor's degree.

He earned a pilot's certificate while still in high school and enjoyed flying his Cessna airplane, said his fiancée, Lisa Manganiello of Herndon. He also volunteered for the Boy Scouts, serving for more than 10 years as an assistant scoutmaster for Troop 1492 in Derwood, organizing the year's "high adventure" trips involving hiking, whitewater rafting or sailing, and he mentored scouts working toward the rank of Eagle Scout.

He was born in Worcester, Mass., and grew up in East Greenbush, N.Y.

His marriage to Dianne Gorman ended in divorce.

Survivors include two sons from his first marriage, Christopher Riano of New York City and Nicholas Riano of Derwood; his mother, Irja Riano of Rensselaer, N.Y.; and a brother.

Mary L. Peake, 70, co-founder and owner of her family's software business, died of cancer May 21 at her home in Chantilly.

In 1986, Mrs. Peake, along with her husband and sons, started W. Quinn Associates in Reston, a server-based software company that grew to 120 employees before it was sold to Precise Software in 2001. She was the board chairwoman and chief financial officer.

Born in Pottstown, Pa., she worked in her family's corner grocery store and her father's dress factory. She was an accomplished pianist and attended Cedar Crest College in Allentown, Pa. She married and went to work for C&P Telephone Co. in Washington until 1958, when she resigned and became a full-time homemaker for the next 28 years.

Mrs. Peake was active in business, civic and charitable groups and was a member of the Democratic Party.

Survivors include her husband of 49 years, William Peake Sr. of Chantilly; three children, William Peake Jr. of Manassas, Jennifer Ann Ferrer of Herndon and Jonathan Andrew Peake of Orange, Va.; a sister; and three grandsons.

Henry John Spruks, 77, a retired Washington area accountant who was also a sailing enthusiast and marine artist, died of pneumonia May 3 at Capital Hospice in Arlington.

Mr. Spruks, a son of a U.S. diplomat, was born in Scranton, Pa., and grew up in Washington and Miami. At age 16, he worked on a banana boat in the Dominican Republic. He also went on a series of transatlantic cruises to visit relatives in England.

He joined the Navy in 1948 and served aboard a destroyer on cruises to the Mediterranean, France, Italy, Greece and Malta, among other places. After serving as a radio operator in Korea during the war there, he left the Navy in 1952 with the rank of petty officer second class.

Returning to Washington, Mr. Spruks received a degree in commercial science from Benjamin Franklin University in 1955. He then worked for about 30 years for Millard T. Charlton & Associates, which had its offices in Washington and later in Bladensburg.

For recreation, he sailed on the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay. He mastered kayaks, canoes and several small boats he owned over the years. He also served on the crews of other sailors' boats in Wednesday night races at Annapolis.

In the 1960s, he briefly co-owned a business that sold canvas-top kayaks known as foldboats.

Mr. Spruks retired from Charlton & Associates after he had a stroke in 1985. About two years later, he moved to Green Cove Springs, Fla., where he enjoyed painting marine scenes.

He returned to Washington in 1992, when he moved into St. Mary's Court, an independent living facility.

He was a member of the National Press Club and the Washington Canoe Club.

Survivors include a sister, Jean Spruks Russell of Arlington.

Laurence McKenzie Bearse, 68, a retired Navy officer who later trained military attaches, died May 20 of cancer at his home in Fallston, Md. He had been a Herndon resident.

Mr. Bearse was born in Centerville, Mass., and was a disc jockey at a local radio station during high school. He received a bachelor's degree from Williams College in 1959 and a master's degree from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education in 1960. He attended L'Ecole Francaise at Middlebury College in Vermont.

He enlisted in the Navy in 1961 and served as assistant naval attache in Paris in 1966-67 and as defense and naval attache in Antananarivo, Madagascar, from 1976 to 1979, where he survived an assassination attempt but was no longer able to serve as an attache.

He was a destroyer communications officer, taught French at the U.S. Naval Academy and served in Vietnam and Thailand. He also served in the naval quarantine of Cuba and as head of the Naval Investigative Service in Puerto Rico.

He began training military attaches in 1979. After retiring from the Navy in 1987, he became associate dean of the Joint Military Attache School at Bolling Air Force Base. In 1999, he was inducted into the Attache Hall of Fame.

In Fallston, where he moved after his retirement in 1999, he continued his passion for gardening and traveled extensively to art museums in America and Europe. He loved classical music, enjoyed watching Orioles games on TV and reading to students at a local elementary school. He also visited Cape Cod frequently.

His marriage to Renee Michelle Bearse ended in divorce.

Survivors include his wife of 14 years, Linda Graham of Fallston; a daughter from his first marriage, Sarah Francoise Bearse of Centreville, Va., and three stepchildren from his second marriage, Elizabeth A. Waring of Austin, Tex., Nathalie A. Smith of Forest Hill, Md., and David Harry of Cornish, Maine; his parents, Laurence Weston Bearse and Jean McKenzie Bearse of Centerville, Mass.; a sister; and five grandchildren.

Benoit Edmond Muise, 75, who worked in the food service management business for nearly 30 years until his retirement in 1988, died May 13 at his home in Washington. He had Parkinsonism, a neurological disorder with symptoms similar to Parkinson's disease.

Mr. Muise operated Benoit Inc., a food service management company, from about 1983 to 1988. One of his biggest clients was Bethesda's Carriage Hill, a nursing home.

Earlier, he worked for Cleaves Food Services Corp., Woodward & Lothrop and Guest Services Inc., for whom he managed food service contracts with the National Institutes of Health and the Central Intelligence Agency.

He was a member of the Food Service Executives Association, and after his retirement, he was a Travelers Aid volunteer at Reagan National Airport.

Mr. Muise was born in Boston and grew up in Meriden, N.H. He was a collegiate hockey and lacrosse player who graduated from the University of New Hampshire, and he served with the Army in Japan during the Korean War.

He moved to Washington in 1961 to work as food service manager at Trinity College, a position he held until 1972.

Survivors include his wife of 48 years, Louise Muise of Washington; two sons, Peter Muise of Washington and Joseph Muise of Glendale, Calif.; four daughters, Anne Yale of Palmdale, Calif., Michelle Muise of Gaithersburg, Gabriella Koza of Tempe, Ariz., and Suzanne Roberts of Mitchellville; a brother; seven grandchildren; and a great-grandson.

Charlotte Harrison Young, 78, a longtime Silver Spring resident who was an advocate for children and youth, died of lung cancer May 20 at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring.

Mrs. Young, known as Gigi, was born in Beverly Hills, Calif., and grew up near Philadelphia. Shortly after receiving her undergraduate degree from Antioch College in 1950, she moved to the District to work as a reporter for two years at Congressional Quarterly. After her marriage, she was a homemaker, raising three children and continuing her writing career on a part-time basis.

In the early 1980s, she joined Women in Community Service, a social service effort established by five national women's organizations to improve the quality of life for women and youth in poverty. She began as a Job Corps recruiter and then became a counselor at the Woodland Job Corps Center in Laurel, where she started a teen pregnancy program and a student newspaper. She received a number of awards, including the Job Corps center's 1988 Outstanding Service Award.

After her retirement in 1993, she volunteered with Head Start at Montgomery Knolls Elementary School in Silver Spring. She was an avid photographer, a voracious reader and a frequent traveler with a fascination for offbeat places and experiences, including Iceland and a couple of safaris.

Although she worked in a number of social service programs over the years, "she was always interested in people as individuals," a son said, "in their lives, their families, how they were doing. She always learned everybody's name and would remember them."

Survivors include her husband of 54 years, Kenneth Young of Silver Spring; three children, Mike Young and Rick Young, both of Washington, and Lauren Young of Severna Park; and six grandchildren.

Barbara "Bobbie" Jackson Westervelt, 82, a Falls Church resident who served in the Navy WAVES during World War II, died May 17 at National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda after a heart attack.

Mrs. Westervelt served three years with the Navy group, or Women Appointed for Voluntary Emergency Service. A native of LaGrange, Ga., she joined in 1944 after graduating from college there.

After communication officer training at Smith College in Northampton, Mass., she was assigned to cryptography duty at the Nebraska Avenue Naval Communications Center in Washington.

At the end of the war, she was sent to what is now Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va., for training in naval installation administration. She served in communications at military facilities in New Orleans and Charleston, S.C., before she married and resigned her commission in 1947.

In the ensuing years, she accompanied her husband, John D. Westervelt, a naval officer, on his assignments in Yokosuka, Japan, and the continental United States. They had lived in the Washington area for the past 39 years.

Her interests included playing bridge, gardening, antiquing and cooking, especially classic Southern dishes.

She helped raise money for charitable organizations and was a member of the Naval Wives Club, Daughters of the American Revolution and Daughters of the Confederacy.

Survivors include her husband of 59 years, retired Capt. John D. Westervelt of Falls Church; two children, Jan Westervelt of Takoma Park and John Christie Westervelt of Alpine, Calif.; a sister; and a granddaughter.

Eugene Chen Loh, 72, a distinguished professor emeritus of physics at the University of Utah who became program director of astrophysics at the National Science Foundation, died May 19 at his home in Arlington. He had kidney cancer.

At the University of Utah, Dr. Loh played a crucial role in the construction and operation of the school's first Fly's Eye cosmic ray observatory project.

Fly's Eye was built in the late 1970s to determine the still-elusive source of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays. The rays are the most energetic particles in the universe.

Dr. Loh was physics department chairman and director of the university's High Energy Astrophysics Institute.

In 1998, he began working at the National Science Foundation, where he helped start the particle and nuclear astrophysics program, and retired in 2005. He officially retired from the university in 2002.

Dr. Loh was a native of Suzhou, China, and at age 15 immigrated with his family to Blacksburg, Va., where his father was a physics professor.

He became a U.S. citizen as a young man.

He was a 1955 graduate of Virginia Tech and received a doctorate in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1961. He spent his early teaching career at Cornell University and joined the Utah faculty in 1975.

Survivors include his wife of 47 years, Jocelyn Dow Loh of Arlington; three sons, Stephen Loh of Wappingers Falls, N.Y., Stanton Loh of La Crosse, Wis., and Stewart Loh of Manlius, N.Y.; a sister, Dr. Evanne Hoehn-Saric of Gibson Island; three brothers, Eddie Loh of Phoenix, Md., Edwin Loh of Okemos, Mich., and Dr. Elwyn Loh of Bryn Mawr, Pa.; and five grandchildren.