Sunday, January 7, 2007
John Ashleigh BrittainEconomist
John Ashleigh Brittain, 83, an economist who was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, died Jan. 3 at Suburban Hospital of cardiac arrest, a week after having surgery for a broken leg. He had also had muscular dystrophy since childhood.
Mr. Brittain, who lived in Bethesda, came to the Washington region in 1964, when he joined Brookings. While there, he wrote four books on economics and public policy. His work on income distribution influenced federal policies on the earned income tax credit. He retired in 1981.
Mr. Brittain was born in Chicago and grew up in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He was a graduate of Knox College in Illinois. During World War II, he was a civilian doing research on military matters in Washington and Cumberland, Md. In the 1950s, he taught economics at the English-language Mexico City College and the University of Leeds in England.
He received a doctorate in economics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1956. He taught at Cornell University from 1956 to 1959 and at Vanderbilt University from 1959 to 1964.
Survivors include his wife of 57 years, Geraldine Brittain of Bethesda; two children, Mark Brittain of Silver Spring and Erica Brittain of Potomac; and two grandchildren.
Mary St. John DouglasMedical Researcher, TrusteeMary St. John Douglas, 84, a medical researcher who served on the board of trustees of Princeton University and other institutions, died Jan. 4 of congestive heart failure at Sibley Memorial Hospital. She lived in Chevy Chase for more than 50 years before moving last year to Grand Oaks assisted living facility in Washington.
Mrs. Douglas was the author or co-author of many publications on blood transfusion and cold-temperature biology. She began working at the laboratories of the American Red Cross in the 1960s and spent the last 15 years of her career with the Naval Medical Research Center. She continued to work until shortly before her death.
She served on the boards and as an officer of the Society for Cryobiology and the American Association of Tissue Banks, the latter of which presented her with its distinguished service award in 1995. She also received the Tiffany Award from the American Red Cross, its highest award for a staff member.
Mrs. Douglas was born into a medical family in New York. She was a graduate of Bennington College in Vermont and received a master's degree in chemistry from Yale University in 1948.
She served as a trustee of Princeton University from 1972 to 1982 as one of the first two women in that position. She was also a trustee of the Potomac School in McLean, Planned Parenthood and the Whiting Foundation in New York.
Survivors include her husband of 61 years, John W. Douglas, an assistant U.S. attorney general in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, of Washington; two children, Kate Douglas Torrey of Chapel Hill, N.C., and Peter R. Douglas of New York; a brother; a sister; and four grandchildren.
Frank Hutches Pierce IIIOperations ManagerFrank Hutches Pierce III, 75, a retired operations manager in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, died Dec. 24 of complications due to bronchitis at his home in Silver Spring. He lived in Silver Spring for more than 50 years.
Mr. Pierce was born in Princess Anne, Md., where he attended the public schools and historic Manokin Presbyterian Church. As a student at what is now Salisbury University, he played the saxophone and fronted a band. He also was a night DJ on the local radio station. He received his undergraduate degree from Salisbury after serving in the Navy during the Korean War.
Mr. Pierce joined the Naval Ordnance Laboratory at White Oak in the mid-1950s and later joined the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. He worked as an operations manager and U.S. Navy liaison to two NATO groups. He retired in 1996.
He also was an accomplished photographer with an interest in portrait photography and photographs of airplanes. He also photographed weddings. A writer as well, he published works about genealogy and history on the Eastern Shore and "A Boy's Eye View of World War II."
Survivors include his wife of 54 years, Nancy Beville Pierce of Silver Spring; two children, Frank Hutches Pierce IV of Silver Spring and Marie Rundquist of Gaithersburg; and one grandson.
Dr. Basharat A. JamilGovernment MathematicianDr. Basharat A. Jamil, a Defense Mapping Agency employee and an Ahmadi Muslim human rights leader, died Nov. 17 of a brain hemorrhage while visiting the site of his new house in Rockville.
Dr. Jamil, 62, was born in Pune, India, and received his undergraduate degree from Talimul Islam College in Rabwah, Pakistan, in 1965. He received a master's degree from the University of the Punjab in Lahore, Pakistan, in 1967 and received a scholarship to study at Fordham University. He received his doctorate in mathematics from the City University of New York in 1976 for his work in graph theory.
He taught mathematics at Queens College in New York City and was an adjunct professor at George Washington University.
In 1976, he joined the Defense Mapping Agency, now the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, where he worked as a mathematician.
He also was an active member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA and was involved in efforts to secure human rights and religious freedom for the Ahmadiyya Muslim community in Pakistan. In 1992, he and a colleague, Dr. Daniel Aulicino, co-founded Humanity International, an organization supporting humanitarian projects around the world.
Survivors include his wife of 34 years, Razia L. Jamil of Rockville; his mother, Sardar Begum Jamil of Houston; three sons, Irfan Jamil, Usman Jamil and Furhan Jamil, all of Rockville; four brothers, Abdul Hadi Nasir and Mubarak A. Jamil, both of New York City, Abdul Salam Jamil of Houston and Nasir A. Jamil of Bel Air, Md., and a sister, Nasirah Din of Willingboro, N.J.; and two grandchildren.
Bernard DoveAir Force OfficialBernard Dove, 88, a longtime official with the Air Force, died Jan. 5 of respiratory failure at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda. He lived at Leisure World in Silver Spring.
Mr. Dove was a Washington native and graduated from Central High School in 1934. He was a 1938 graduate of American University, where he majored in economics and business administration.
He began his long career in the federal government with the Office of Production Management before joining the Army Air Forces during World War II. He served in the United States and Europe.
After the war, Mr. Dove worked for the Veterans Administration in Seattle and Oakland, Calif. He returned to Washington in 1953 as a field supervisor with the VA and worked briefly with the Navy's Bureau of Yards and Docks before joining the Air Force as a civilian employee in 1955.
He held a succession of jobs before retiring in 1981 as associate director of programs. In 1964, he received the Exceptional Civilian Service Award from the secretary of the Air Force.
Mr. Dove was a charter member of the Senior Executive Service and a life member of the Masons.
He lived in Silver Spring for more than 35 years before moving to Leisure World. He enjoyed traveling the world with his wife.
Survivors include his wife of 64 years, Eleanor Walker Dove of Silver Spring; two children, Linda Randall Dove of Frederick and David Walker Dove of Boston and Beaver Creek, Colo.; a brother, Dr. Samuel Dove of Potomac; two granddaughters; and one great-grandson.
Thomas W. Brown Jr.FDA OfficialThomas W. Brown Jr., 81, a Food and Drug Administration official, died of congestive heart failure Dec. 9 at his home in Annapolis.
Mr. Brown, who retired from the FDA as deputy associate commissioner for compliance in the mid-1970s, had been a Washington area resident since 1971.
He was born in Chicago and graduated from Grinnell College in Iowa. During World War II, he served in the Army and was a prisoner of war in Bologna, Italy. Among his military awards was a Purple Heart.
Mr. Brown started at the FDA as an inspector and rose to the position of district director in Detroit before moving to Northern Virginia.
He was a member of American Legion Post 175 in Severna Park.
His marriages to Dorothy Ehlers Brown and Karen Frank Brown ended in divorce.
Survivors include two children from his first marriage, Janet Brown of Arlington and Steven E. Brown of Annapolis; a son from his second marriage, Chad T. Brown of Niceville, Fla.; a stepdaughter, Jennifer K. Wilson of Sykesville; a sister; and seven grandchildren.
Donald E. Reed Jr.Postal Service WorkerDonald E. Reed Jr., 54, a U.S. Postal Service employee, died of cancer Jan. 5 at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. He lived in Kensington.
Mr. Reed was born in Washington and graduated from Albert Einstein High School in Kensington. He attended Montgomery Community College before graduating from St. Mary's College of Maryland. While in college, he enjoyed fencing.
He worked his entire career for the Postal Service at the Brentwood branch. When off work, he was a referee for soccer and volleyball games through the Montgomery County Recreation Council.
Survivors include three sisters, Martha Rhine of Myrtle Beach, S.C., Stephanie Williams of Middleton, Wis., and Betsy Molyneaux of Gaithersburg; and two brothers, Richard Reed of Castine, Maine, and David Reed of Eldersburg.
John Austin ArmitageDiplomatJohn Austin Armitage, 87, a former State Department official, died of a bowel obstruction Jan. 4 at the University of Virginia Hospital. He lived in Charlottesville.
A State Department employee for 35 years with embassy appointments in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and Iran, he was deputy assistant secretary of state for Eastern Europe from 1973 to 1977. He spent a year as diplomat-in-residence at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where he was on the faculty in Soviet studies and foreign relations until retiring in 1986.
Mr. Armitage was born in Greeneville, Tenn., and graduated from the University of Tennessee. He received a master's of business administration in 1941 from Northwestern University and a master's degree in Soviet studies from Columbia University.
During World War II, he served in the Navy, then joined the State Department in 1943. He received a Meritorious Service Medal from the department. While in the Washington area, he lived in Chevy Chase.
His wife of 56 years, Patricia Weiss, died in 2005.
Survivors include two sons, Lewis Leighton Armitage of Seattle and John Marshall Armitage of Fredericksburg; a sister; and four grandchildren.
Ruth G. BrackWorld War II VeteranRuth G. Brack, 91, a fourth-generation Washingtonian who served in the Army's Women's Auxiliary Corps during World War II, died of congestive heart failure Dec. 30 at Knollwood retirement home in Washington.
Mrs. Brack was a descendant of the Brewer family whose ancestors came to Washington from Fairfax County during the Civil War. She graduated from McKinley Tech High School and George Washington University. She received a master's degree in social service from Catholic University in 1941.
She briefly worked for the D.C. child welfare division before becoming one of the first officer candidates to join WAC at the start of World War II. She attained the rank of captain while serving more than three years in the military.
After the war, she accompanied her husband, Joseph L. Brack, an Army officer who later retired as a colonel in the Judge Advocate General's Corps, to his various military posts, including in Germany. They lived in California until his death in 1977.
She then returned to Washington, where she worked a few years as a social worker at the Veterans Administration D.C. mental hygiene clinic.
She was a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma social sorority.
She had no immediate survivors.
Frank B. ClayArmy Major General
Frank Butner Clay, 85, a retired Army major general who was a veteran of two wars and a military adviser to the U.S.-Vietnamese delegation to the Paris peace talks in 1971, died of cardiac arrest Dec. 30 at the Knollwood military retirement community in Washington.
Born in Auburn, Ala., Gen. Clay was the son of Army Gen. Lucius D. Clay Sr., military governor of the U.S. zone of occupied Germany after World War II, and a grandson of U.S. Sen. Alexander Stephens Clay (D-Ga.).
Gen. Frank B. Clay, a longtime Chevy Chase resident, graduated from Millard Prep School in Washington and was a member of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point Class of 1942.
In World War II, he served with the 1st Armored Division in Tunisia and Italy as a platoon leader, company commander and operations executive of the division's 13th Tank Battalion.
After various peacetime assignments and graduation from the National War College in 1961, he was sent to Vietnam, where he served about a year as a senior adviser to the 7th Vietnam Infantry Division. In 1967, he returned to Vietnam, where he served as commander of an advance party of the 101st Airborne Division and then as assistant division commander of the division.
Gen. Clay had also been assistant division commander of the 101st Airborne Division in Fort Campbell, Ky., and chief of staff at the Army Communications Zone in Europe. In the latter position, he helped with the evacuation of U.S. forces from France after French officials decided to withdraw from NATO in 1967.
His military awards included the Distinguished Service Medal, the Silver Star with two Oak Leaf Clusters, the Legion of Merit, the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Bronze Star with V and two Oak Leaf Clusters and the Purple Heart with Oak Leaf Cluster.
After his retirement from active military duty in 1973, Gen. Clay devoted more time to his family, hobbies and interests. He was a football player and captain of his boxing team at West Point and in later years played squash and tennis at Chevy Chase Country Club.
A student of the U.S. Civil War, he visited and gave tours of battlefields.
His first wife, Patricia A. Clay, died in 1972, after 26 years of marriage.
Survivors include his wife of 33 years, Lydie W. Clay of Washington; three children from his first marriage, Frank B. Clay Jr. of Alexandria, Cathleen Ketcham of Germantown and Christine Tanski of Wilmington, Del.; and three grandchildren.