Obituaries

Elizabeth Spencer RoachHealth Writer, CIA Official

Elizabeth Cass Spencer Roach, 90, who co-wrote a medical book for the National Institutes of Health and later worked at the Central Intelligence Agency, died Feb. 19 of pneumonia at the Mount Vernon Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Alexandria.

Mrs. Roach was born in Leeds, England, to American parents and grew up in Louisiana. She graduated from Newcomb College, now a part of Tulane University in New Orleans. She received a master's degree in endocrinology from Louisiana State University in 1939.

After a year of teaching high school, she became a research chemist with Lever Brothers in Baltimore. She moved to Washington at the beginning of World War II and was an executive with the War Production Board, War Assets Administration and Department of Commerce.

In the late 1940s, she began working at NIH and was the co-author of "A Dictionary of Antibiosis," published in 1951. She then became an official with the CIA.

In 1960, Mrs. Roach moved to Nashville. In 1980, she settled in Alameda, Calif. In 2003, she returned to Alexandria, where she had lived in the 1950s.

She tutored young people, was active in educational and cultural programs for senior citizens, and volunteered with the Kappa Kappa Gamma fraternity. She was a member of the American Civil Liberties Union. Her interests included English literature, word origins, knitting and international travel.

Her husband of 39 years, Francis Joseph Roach, died in 1983.

Survivors include a son, retired Army Brig. Gen. Lewis Spencer Roach of Alexandria; three sisters; and three grandchildren.

-- Matt Schudel