Alger C. Ellis

Alger C. Ellis, 90, a retired Air Force colonel and CIA field officer, died of pneumonia Sept. 23 at the Capital Hospice in Arlington.

During World War II, Col. Ellis served in the Army Air Forces before he was recruited to join the Office of Strategic Services, the wartime forerunner of the CIA.

He served in the China-Burma-India theater with the OSS and conducted airborne prisoner-of-war rescue missions. He joined the CIA in the late 1940s.

He served in Korea as an Air Force intelligence analyst and later served in a riverine unit in Vietnam. In the late 1970s, Col. Ellis served as the CIA's station chief in Stuttgart, Germany.

He retired from the Air Force and CIA in 1978 and was a real estate agent in the Washington area until the early 1990s.

Alger Charles Ellis Jr., an Arlington resident, was a Richmond native and a 1942 graduate of Virginia Tech. In retirement, he served as vice chairman of the OSS Society.

A son, John, died in infancy.

Survivors include his wife, Annie Davis Ellis of Arlington; three children, Marshall Ellis of Arlington, Alice Ellis of Dumfries and Elizabeth Kincaid of Hamilton, Va.; and two granddaughters.

- T. Rees Shapiro