Obituaries

Mr. Flaim, a native Washingtonian, graduated from Georgetown Preparatory School and American University. He received a law degree from the University of Minnesota in 1984 and was in private practice in Minneapolis as a personal injury and criminal defense attorney for about 12 years.

In 1993, he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and in 1997 he returned to the Washington area to care for his aging parents.

He published several short stories and enjoyed taking his parents on trips to central Pennsylvania, where he went fishing in abandoned coal-mine pits.

His marriage to Kathleen Muldoon ended in divorce.

Survivors include two children, Sean Flaim of Silver Spring and Johanna Soule of Bristol, N.H.; and his parents, Edward and Johanna Flaim, of Bethesda.

-- Patricia Sullivan

Valerio R. 'Val' HuntFAA Engineer

Valerio R. "Val" Hunt, 87, a retired Federal Aviation Administration engineer and physicist, died of pneumonia Jan. 28 at Beebe Medical Center in Lewes, Del.

He worked for the FAA as head of its advanced automation office from 1982 to 1986, assigned to develop computers to be used for air traffic control. After his retirement, he founded his own consulting company, from which he retired in 2001.

Born in Columbus, Ohio, Mr. Hunt served in the Army Air Forces during World War II, flying B-25 bombers "over the Hump" in the China-Burma-India theater. After the war ended, he graduated from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa.

Mr. Hunt moved to Baltimore in 1952 and joined what became AAI, an aerospace and defense development and manufacturing company. He later became chief engineer of communications and navigation at Bendix Radio in Towson, where he worked on the computer system that tracked manned and unmanned satellites. Later, he was vice president of engineering at Computer Sciences Corp. in Silver Spring, directing the program for the Navy's acoustics intelligence data system.