Obituaries

Dewey Calloway Nash Jr.Artist, Illustrator

Dewey Calloway Nash Jr., 66, a longtime artist and illustrator for the Air Force and other federal agencies, died of metastatic colon cancer Feb. 27 at Capital Hospice in Arlington County. He lived in Reston.

Mr. Nash worked in the federal government for 40 years before retiring from the Air Force in 2006. He was an illustrator during the early research and development phases of the A-10 and F-22 aircraft programs.

More recently, he was the lead artist and designer for the 100th Anniversary of Flight exhibition and produced more than 200 panels that were displayed at Rockefeller Center in New York and other U.S. venues before a show at Kitty Hawk, N.C., Dec. 17, 2003.

He also developed the logo for the 60th anniversary of the Air Force exhibition, which traveled to several national and international sites from 2006 to 2007.

Mr. Nash had solo shows in Dupont Circle and in several galleries in Alexandria. He was an award-winning watercolorist and a founding member of Gallery West in Old Town Alexandria. Mr. Nash also exhibited and sold his paintings at the first Reston Arts Festival in the 1990s.

He was born in Monroe, Va., and moved with his family to Northern Virginia after World War II. He grew up in Arlington and Annandale and graduated from Annandale High School, where he began selling his paintings.

He studied at American University for a year before joining the Army and serving with the 82nd Airborne Division from 1961 to 1964. After the Army, he returned to American University and attended the University of Virginia under the G.I. Bill until 1976.

At different intervals from 1969 to 2006, Mr. Nash worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Air Force. In 1979, he worked briefly as an artist for the National Wildlife Federation. While there, he created several of the federation's nature-themed Christmas cards and did illustrations for Your Big Backyard, a children's magazine.

From 1993 to 1997, he was the graphics arts division chief for the Air and Space Operations Directorate at the Pentagon.

In retirement, Mr. Nash looked forward to producing more of his nature-themed paintings in watercolors, oils, acrylics and linoleum blocks. He was inspired by his travels with his wife to Maine and the Outer Banks and cross-country sojourns throughout the West, his wife said.

His marriage to Sharron Nash ended in divorce.

Survivors include his wife, Ruth "Ricky" Dahne Nash of Reston; a son from his first marriage, David Nash of Bluffton, S.C.; a stepdaughter, Alexandra Messinger of San Francisco; his mother, Margaret Finkle of Fort Myers, Fla.; three stepsisters, Linda Wright of Gainesville, Barbara Black of Coral Gables, Fla., and Carol Germain of San Antonio; and a granddaughter.