Obituaries

John Church RennerForeign Service Officer

John Church Renner, 85, a Foreign Service officer who was a senior staff member on the National Security Council, died of congestive heart failure July 26 at Inova Mount Vernon Hospital. He lived in Alexandria.

Mr. Renner was with the State Department for 28 years and retired in 1979 as counselor and special envoy to the Office of the President's Special Trade Negotiator. Mr. Renner developed a policy framework for U.S. economic relations with China in anticipation of the restoration of full diplomatic ties. For the previous two years, he had been assigned to the National Security Council at the White House and helped formulate international economic policy.

Mr. Renner was born in Cleveland and grew up in Akron, Ohio. He interrupted college study to serve in the Army during World War II as a cryptanalyst in the South Pacific, and he participated in the liberation of the Philippines.

After the war, he graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Ohio Wesleyan University and received a master's degree in 1949 from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He spent the next two years in the CIA until joining the Foreign Service.

He was posted in Germany, France and Belgium, where he was economic counselor to the U.S. mission to the European Communities and later was deputy chief of mission and charge d'affaires for the U.S. Embassy. He received the State Department's Commendable Service Award in 1962. He also attended the National War College in the mid-1960s.

Mr. Renner was director of the Office of International Trade from 1970 to 1972 and for the next two years was deputy assistant secretary of state for international trade policy.

After retiring from government work in 1979, Mr. Renner worked in the corporate planning division of Westinghouse in Pittsburgh. Nine years later, he retired and returned to Alexandria, where he took up a third career as a portrait painter.

He was a past officer of the Hollin Hills Area Democratic Club and was a member of the Mount Vernon Genealogical Society and the Mount Vernon Country Club. He also enjoyed golf.

Survivors include his wife of 58 years, Elizabeth Welpton Renner of Alexandria; three children, Douglas Church Renner and Curtis Shotwell Renner, both of Alexandria, and Anne Elizabeth Renner of Concord, N.H.; a brother; and three grandsons.

-- Patricia Sullivan