Saturday, August 18, 2007
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
Robert H. RobertsonPsychiatrist
Robert H. Robertson, 87, a psychiatrist who worked at St. Elizabeths Hospital and at the Mount Vernon Mental Health Center, died Aug. 1 of complications of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at Capital Hospice in Arlington County.
Mr. Robertson began working at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington in 1951 and became a forensic psychiatrist there starting in 1969. He left in 1973 to work in crisis intervention at the Mount Vernon center, where he stayed until 1990.
From 1973 to 1990, he also taught psychiatry and neurology at Howard, Georgetown and George Washington universities and worked in the evenings at alcohol treatment clinics in Alexandria and Arlington.
In 1992, he returned to St. Elizabeths before retiring in 1998. For much of his career, he also worked for the Social Security Administration, reviewing psychiatric disability claims during after-work hours. He retired at 78.
Mr. Robertson was born in Narberth, Pa., and attended Oberlin College until he was drafted into the Army in 1942. He completed his undergraduate studies at Stanford University and attended Temple University Medical School in Pennsylvania starting in 1944.
After his discharge from the Army in 1946, he completed his studies at Temple on the GI Bill. He graduated second in his class in 1948, eventually passing his boards in both psychiatry and neurology.
As a member of the U.S. Public Health Service, he worked at the Norfolk Marine Hospital, the Atlanta Penitentiary and the Lexington Penitentiary in Oklahoma.
In retirement, he continued to be an avid reader, enjoying nonfiction, biographies and history. He also collected coins. He loved to spend time traveling with his wife and frequently going to Bethany Beach, Del.
Survivors include his wife of 46 years, Joan Robertson of McLean; four children, Bob Robertson of Fairfax City, David Robertson of Kill Devil Hills, N.C., Carolyn Bowen of Peachtree City, Ga., and Louise Robertson of Pickerington, Ohio; and 10 grandchildren.
-- Yvonne Shinhoster Lamb